rebuke his flatterers, who, in extolling his grandeur and power, had
represented to him that even the elements were subservient to his
will, he took his stand upon the sea-shore when the tide was coming
in, with his flatterers by his side, and commanded the rising waves
not to approach his royal feet. He kept his sycophantic courtiers in
this ridiculous position until the encroaching waters drove them away,
and then dismissed them overwhelmed with confusion. The story is told
in a thousand different ways, and with a great variety of different
embellishments, according to the fancy of the several narrators; all
that there is now any positive evidence for believing, however, is,
that probably some simple incident of the kind occurred, out of which
the stories have grown.

Canute did not hold his kingdom in peace. Ethelred sent his son across
the Channel into England to negotiate with the Anglo-Saxon powers for
his own restoration to the throne. An arrangement was accordingly made
with them, and Ethelred returned, and a violent civil war immediately
ensued between Ethelred and the Anglo-Saxons on the one hand, and
Canute and the Danes on the other. At length Ethelred fell, and his
son Edmund, who was at the time of his death one of his generals,
succeeded him. Emma and his two other sons had been left in Normandy.
Edmund carried on the war against Canute with great energy. One of his
battles was fought in the county of Warwick, in the heart of England,
where the peasant Godwin lived. In this battle the Danes were
defeated, and the discomfited generals fled in all directions from the
field wherever they saw the readiest hope of concealment or safety.
One of them, named Ulf,[1] took a by-way, which led him in the
direction of Godwin's father's farm.

Night came on, and he lost his way in a wood. Men, when flying under
such circumstances from a field of battle, avoid always the public
roads, and seek concealment in unfrequented paths, where, they easily
get bewildered and lost. Ulf wandered about all night in the forest,
and when the morning came he found himself exhausted with fatigue,
anxiety, and hunger, certain to perish unless he could find some
succor, and yet dreading the danger of being recognized as a Danish
fugitive if he were to be discovered by any of the Saxon inhabitants
of the land. At length he heard the shouts of a peasant who was coming
along a solitary pathway through the wood, driving a herd to their
p