father's earldom.

Rolf, presuming on the favor shown to his family, while returning from
an expedition on the Baltic, made a descent on the coast of Viken, a
part of Norway, and carried off the cattle wanted by his crew. The King,
who happened at that time to be in that district, was highly displeased,
and, assembling a council, declared Rolf Ganger an outlaw. His mother,
Hilda, a dame of high lineage, in vain interceded for him, and closed
her entreaty with a warning in the wild extemporary poetry of the North:

"Bethink thee, monarch, it is ill
With such a wolf, at wolf to play,
Who, driven to the wild woods away,
May make the king's best deer his prey."

Harald listened not, and it was well; for through the marvellous
dealings of Providence, the outlawry of this "wolf" of Norway led to the
establishment of our royal line, and to that infusion of new spirit into
England to which her greatness appears to be chiefly owing.

The banished Rolf found a great number of companions, who, like himself,
were unwilling to submit to the strict rule of Harald Harfagre, and
setting sail with them, he first plundered and devastated the coast of
Flanders, and afterward turned toward France. In the spring of 896, the
citizens of Rouen, scarcely yet recovered from the miseries inflicted
upon them by the fierce Danish rover, Hasting, were dismayed by the
sight of a fleet of long low vessels with spreading sails, heads carved
like that of a serpent, and sterns finished like the tail of the
reptile, such as they well knew to be the keels of the dreaded Northmen,
the harbingers of destruction and desolation. Little hope of succor or