e would visit the tomb of Waltheof, her husband. And
Alftruda went with her, taking a goodly company of knights to be her
escort, while Hereward remained at Bourne with few to guard it.

And knowing this, to Bourne came Ascelin and Taillebois, Evermue, Raoul
de Dol, and many another Norman, and burst in upon Hereward in some such
fashion as he had done himself some ten years earlier. "Felons," he
shouted, "your king has given me his truce! Is this your French law? Is
this your French honour? Come on, traitors all, and get what you can of
a naked man; you will buy it dear. Guard my back, Winter!"

And with his constant comrade at his back, he dashed right at the press
of knights:

And when his lance did break in hand
Full fell enough he smote with brand.

And now he is all wounded, and Winter, who fought at his back, is fallen
on his face, and Hereward stands alone within a ring of eleven corpses.
A knight rushes in, to make a twelfth, cloven through the helm; but with
the blow Hereward's blade snaps short, and he hurls it away as his foes
rush in. With his shield he beat out the brains of two, but now
Taillebois and Evermue are behind him, and with four lances through his
back he falls, to rise no more.

So perished the last of the English.

* * * * *

Hypatia

In "Hypatia," published in 1853, after passing through
"Fraser's Magazine," Kingsley turned from social problems in
England to life in Egypt in the fifth century, taking the same
pains to give the historical facts of the old dying Roman
world as he did to describe contemporary events at home. The
moral of "Hypatia," according to its author, is that "the sins
of these old Egyptians are yours, their errors yours, their
doom yours, their deliverance yours. There is nothing new
under the sun."

_I.--The Laura_

In the 413th year of the Christian era, some 300 miles from Alexandria,
the young monk Philammon was sitting on the edge of a low range of
inland cliffs, crested with drifting sand. Behind him the desert sand
waste stretched, lifeless, interminable, reflecting its lurid blare on
the horizon of the cloudless vault of blue. Presently he rose and
wandered along the cliffs in search of fuel for the monastery from
whence he came, for Abbot Pambo's laura at Scetis.

It lay pleasantly enough, that lonely laura, or lane of rude Cyclopean
cells, under the perp