eft by will, as man fancies? The King's wish has its
weight, no doubt, but the Witan hath its yea or its nay, and the Witan
and Commons are seldom at issue thereon. Thy duke King of England!
Marry! Ha! ha!"

"Brute!" muttered the knight to himself; then adding aloud, with his old
tone of irony (now much habitually subdued by years and discretion), "Why
takest thou so the part of the ceorls? thou a captain, and well-nigh a
thegn!"

"I was born a ceorl, and my father before me," returned Sexwolf, "and I
feel with my class; though my grandson may rank with the thegns, and, for
aught I know, with the earls."

The Sire de Graville involuntarily drew off from the Saxon's side, as if
made suddenly aware that he had grossly demeaned himself in such
unwitting familiarity with a ceorl, and a ceorl's son; and he said, with
a much more careless accent and lofty port than before:

"Good man, thou wert a ceorl, and now thou leadest Earl Harold's men to
the war! How is this? I do not quite comprehend it."

"How shouldst thou, poor Norman?" replied the Saxon, compassionately.
"The tale is soon told. Know that when Harold our Earl was banished, and
his lands taken, we his ceorls helped with his sixhaendman, Clapa, to
purchase his land, nigh by London, and the house wherein thou didst find
me, of a stranger, thy countryman, to whom they were lawlessly given.
And we tilled the land, we tended the herds, and we kept the house till
the Earl came back."

"Ye had moneys then, moneys of your own, ye ceorls!" said the Norman,
avariciously.

"How else could we buy our freedom? Every ceorl hath some hours to
himself to employ to his profit, and can lay by for his own ends. These
savings we gave up for our Earl, and when the Earl came back, he gave the
sixhaendman hides of land enow to make him a thegn; and he gave the
ceorls who hade holpen Clapa, their freedom and broad shares of his
boc-land, and most of them now hold their own ploughs and feed their own
herds. But I loved the Earl (having no wife) better than swine and
glebe, and I prayed him to let me serve him in arms. And so I have
risen, as with us ceorls can rise."

"I am answered," said Mallet de Graville, thoughtfully, and still
somewhat perplexed. "But these theowes, (they are slaves,) never rise.
It cannot matter to them whether shaven Norman or bearded Saxon sit on
the throne?"

"Thou art right there," answered the Saxon; "it matters as little to them
as it doth