he proper Englishman of to-day, taking a
commission from William, riding gaily out on a gentleman's errand, not
a warrior's. This is shown by the falcon on his wrist, that wonderful
bird of the Middle Ages that marked the gentleman by his associations,
marked the high-born man on an errand of peace or pleasure.

In these travelling days, no sooner do we land in Normandy than Mount
St. Michael looms up as a happy pilgrimage. So to the same religious
refuge Harold went on the pictured cloth, crossed the adjacent river
in peril, and--how pleasingly does the past leap up and tap the
present--he floundered in the quicksands that surround the Mount, and
about which the driver of your carriage across the _passerelle_ will
tell you recent tales of similar flounderings.

And when in Brittany, who does not go to tumbley-down Dinan to see its
ancient gates and walls, its palaces of Queen Anne, its lurching crowd
of houses? It is thither that Harold, made of threads of ancient wool,
sped and gave battle after the manner of his time.

Another link to make us love this relic of the olden time: It is the
star, the star so great that the space of the picture is all too small
to place it; so the excited hands of the embroiderers set it outside
the limit, in the border.

It flames over false Harold's head and he remembers sombrely that it
is an omen of a change of rule. He is king now, has usurped a throne,
has had himself crowned. But for how long is he monarch, with this
flaming menace burning into his courage? The year finishing saw the
prophecy fulfilled by the coming of the conqueror.

It was this section of the tapestry that, when it came to Paris, had
power to startle Napoleon, ever superstitious, ever ready to read
signs. The star over Harold's head reminded him of the possible
brevity of his own eminence.

The star that blazed in 1066--we have found it. It was not imaginary.
Behold how prettily the bits of history fit together, even though we
go far afield to find those bits. This one comes from China. Records
were better kept there in those times than in Christian Europe; and
the Chinese astronomers write of a star appearing April 2, 1066, which
was seen first in the early morning sky, then after a time disappeared
to reappear in the evening sky, with a flaming tail, most agreeably
sensational. It was Halley's comet, the same that we watched in 1910
with no superstitious fear at all for princes nor for powers. But it
is