Wilfred saw men blind
with one eye, or wanting a hand; and why? Because they had killed a
hare or wounded a deer; for it would have been a hanging matter to
kill the red hart.
Meanwhile he was growing in mind and body; he had now passed his
seventeenth birthday, and was beginning to think himself a man; but
where were the vassals whose leader and chieftain he was born to
be?--where?
The people of Aescendune were diminishing daily--the English people
thereof, we should say, for the places of those who fled their
homes, and went no one knew whither, were filled by Normans,
French, Bretons, or other like "cattle," as Wilfred called them in
his wrath.
Everywhere he heard the same "jabbering" tongue, that Norman
French--French with a Danish accent, and he liked it little enough.
Good old English was becoming rare; the strangers compared it to
the grunting of swine or the lowing of cattle, in their utter scorn
of the aborigines.
Were the descendants of Hengist, Horsa, Ella, Cerdic, Ercenwin,
Ida, Uffa, and Cridda to bear this? and more especially was he,
Wilfred, the grandson of the heroic Alfgar, whose praises as the
companion in arms of the Ironside had been sung by a hundred
minstrels, and told again and again at the winter's fire in the
castle hall--was he to bear this contumely? He could not much
longer.
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