he golden cups and goblets he had refused to take, but had
gladly accepted the silver.

Edmund and Egbert had left Athelney for a few days on a mission. The
king had described to them minutely where he had hidden the sacred
standard with the Golden Dragon. It was in the hut of a charcoal-burner
in the heart of the forests of Wiltshire. Upon reaching the hut, and
showing to the man the king's signet-ring, which when leaving the
standard he had told him would be the signal that any who might come
for it were sent by him, the man produced the standard from the thatch
of his cottage, in which it was deeply buried, and hearing that it was
again to be unfurled called his two stalwart sons from their work and
at once set out with Edmund and Egbert to join the army.

Easter came and went, but the preparations were not yet completed. A
vast supply of arms was needed, and while the smiths laboured at their
work Edmund and Egbert drilled the fighting men who had assembled, in
the tactics which had on a small scale proved so effective. The wedge
shape was retained, and Edmund's own band claimed the honour of forming
the apex, but it had now swollen until it contained a thousand men, and
as it moved in a solid body, with its thick edge of spears outward, the
king felt confident that it would be able to break through the
strongest line of the Danes.

From morning till night Edmund and Egbert, assisted by the thanes of
Somerset who had gathered there, drilled the men and taught them to
rally rapidly from scattered order into solid formation. Unaccustomed
to regular tactics the ease and rapidity with which these movements
came to be carried out at the notes of Edmund's bugle seemed to all to
be little less than miraculous, and they awaited with confidence and
eagerness their meeting with the Danes on the field.

At the end of April messengers were sent out bidding the Saxons hold
themselves in readiness, and on the 6th of May Alfred moved with his
force from Athelney to Egbertesstan (now called Brixton), lying to the
east of the forest of Selwood, which lay between Devonshire and
Somerset. The Golden Dragon had been unfurled. On the fort in
Athelney, and after crossing the marshes to the mainland it was carried
in the centre of the phalanx.

On the 12th they reached the appointed place, where they found a great
multitude of Saxons already gathered. They had poured in from
Devonshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire, from Dorset and Hant