onquered enemies. He was as great in peace as in war;
and yet few English boys know more than a faint outline of the events
of Alfred's reign--events which have exercised an influence upon the
whole future of the English people. School histories pass briefly over
them; and the incident of the burned cake is that which is, of all the
actions of a great and glorious reign, the most prominent in boys'
minds. In this story I have tried to supply the deficiency. Fortunately
in the Saxon Chronicles and in the life of King Alfred written by his
friend and counsellor Asser, we have a trustworthy account of the
events and battles which first laid Wessex prostrate beneath the foot
of the Danes, and finally freed England for many years from the
invaders. These histories I have faithfully followed. The account of
the siege of Paris is taken from a very full and detailed history of
that event by the Abbe D'Abbon, who was a witness of the scenes he
described.

Yours sincerely,
G. A. HENTY

CHAPTER I: THE FUGITIVES

A low hut built of turf roughly thatched with rushes and standing on
the highest spot of some slightly raised ground. It was surrounded by a
tangled growth of bushes and low trees, through which a narrow and
winding path gave admission to the narrow space on which the hut stood.
The ground sloped rapidly. Twenty yards from the house the trees
ceased, and a rank vegetation of reeds and rushes took the place of the
bushes, and the ground became soft and swampy. A little further pools
of stagnant water appeared among the rushes, and the path abruptly
stopped at the edge of a stagnant swamp, though the passage could be
followed by the eye for some distance among the tall rushes. The hut,
in fact, stood on a hummock in the midst of a wide swamp where the
water sometimes deepened into lakes connected by sluggish streams.

On the open spaces of water herons stalked near the margin, and great
flocks of wild-fowl dotted the surface. Other signs of life there were
none, although a sharp eye might have detected light threads of smoke
curling up here and there from spots where the ground rose somewhat
above the general level. These slight elevations, however, were not
visible to the eye, for the herbage here grew shorter than on the lower
and wetter ground, and the land apparently stretched away for a vast
distance in a dead flat--a rush-covered swamp, broken only here and
there by patches of bushes and low trees.

Th