of justice, that the Pope should arbitrate between your King and the
Norman? yet all the while the monk knew that the Pope had already
predetermined the cause; and had ye fallen into the wile, ye would but
have cowered under the verdict of a judgment that has presumed, even
before it invoked ye to the trial, to dispose of a free people and an
ancient kingdom!"

"It is true, it is true," cried the thegns, rallying from their first
superstitious terror, and, with their plain English sense of justice,
revolted at the perfidy which the priest's overtures had concealed.
"We will hear no more; away with the Swikebode." [257]

The pale cheek of the monk turned yet paler, he seemed abashed by the
storm of resentment he had provoked; and in some fear, perhaps, at the
dark faces bent on him, he slunk behind his comrade the knight, who as
yet had said nothing, but, his face concealed by his helmet, stood
motionless like a steel statue. And, in fact, these two ambassadors,
the one in his monk garb, the other in his iron array, were types and
representatives of the two forces now brought to bear upon Harold and
England--Chivalry and the Church.

At the momentary discomfiture of the Priest, now stood forth the
Warrior; and, throwing back his helmet, so that the whole steel cap
rested on the nape of the neck, leaving the haughty face and half-
shaven head bare, Mallet de Graville thus spoke:

"The ban of the Church is against ye, warriors and chiefs of England,
but for the crime of one man! Remove it from yourselves: on his
single head be the curse and the consequence. Harold, called King of
England--failing the two milder offers of my comrade, thus saith from