"I know not, remember not--aught save these words. 'Now, then, give
me those for whom I placed myself in thy power; let me restore Haco to
his fatherland, and Wolnoth to his mother's kiss, and wend home my
way.' And, saints in heaven! what was the answer of this caitiff
Norman, with his glittering eye and venomed smile? 'Haco thou shalt
have, for he is an orphan and an uncle's love is not so hot as to burn
from a distance; but Wolnoth, thy mother's son, must stay with me as a
hostage for thine own faith. Godwin's hostages are released; Harold's
hostage I retain: it is but a form, yet these forms are the bonds of
princes.'

"I looked at him, and his eye quailed. And I said, 'That is not in
the compact.' And William answered, 'No, but it is the seal to it.'
Then I turned from the Duke and I called my brother to my side, and I
said, 'Over the seas have I come for thee. Mount thy steed and ride
by my side, for I will not leave the land without thee.' And Wolnoth
answered, 'Nay, Duke William tells me that he hath made treaties with
thee, for which I am still to be the hostage; and Normandy has grown
my home, and I love William as my lord.' Hot words followed, and
Wolnoth, chafed, refused entreaty and command, and suffered me to see
that his heart was not with England! O, mother, mother, how shall I
meet thine eye! So I returned with Haco. The moment I set foot on my
native England, that moment her form seemed to rise from the tall
cliffs, her voice to speak in the winds! All the glamour by which I
had been bound, forsook me; and I sprang forward in scorn, above the
fear of the dead men's bones. Miserable overcraft of the snarer! Had
my simple word alone bound me, or that word been ratified after slow
and deliberate thought, by the ordinary oaths that appeal to God, far
stronger the bond upon my soul than the mean surprise, the covert
tricks, the insult and the mocking fraud. But as I rode on, the oath