"If you have nothing better," he said, "will you ride with me to
my father's castle, it is but five miles away? My name is De Burg.
I can promise you a hearty welcome. My father was one of the knights
who accompanied the duke when he paid his visit to England some
fifteen years ago, and he liked the country much, and has ever since
spoken of the princely hospitality with which they were received
by your king. He did not meet Earl Harold then."

"No, the earl with his father and brothers was away in exile," Wulf
said rather shortly, for that visit had been a most unpleasant one
to Englishmen. It had happened when the Norman influence was
altogether in the ascendant. The king was filling the chief places
at court and in the church with Normans, had bestowed wide domains
upon them, and their castles were everywhere rising to dominate the
land. Englishmen then regarded with hostility this visit of the
young Norman duke with his great train of knights, and although at
the return of Godwin and his sons the greater portion of the intruders
had been driven out, their influence still remained at court, and
it was even said that Edward had promised the duke that he should
be his successor.

It was true that Englishmen laughed at the promise. The King of
England was chosen by the nation, and Edward had no shadow of right
to bequeath the throne even to one of his sons much less to a foreign
prince, who, although related to himself by marriage, had no drop
of English blood in his veins. Still, that the promise should ever
have been made rankled in the minds of the English people, the more
so as the power of Normandy increased, and the ambition as well as
the valour of its duke became more and more manifest According to