"Take your hands off my throat, master. He was only my father."
Hereward stood shocked and puzzled. After all, the man was "No-man's-man,"
and would not be missed; and Martin Lightfoot, letting alone his madness,
was as a third hand and foot to him all day long.
So all he said was, "I hope you have buried him well and safely?"
"You may walk your bloodhound over his grave, to-morrow, without finding
him."
And where he lay, Hereward never knew. But from that night Martin got a
trick of stroking and patting his little axe, and talking to it as if it
had been alive.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER.
It would be vain to attempt even a sketch of the reports which came to
Flanders from England during the next two years, or of the conversation
which ensued thereon between Baldwin and his courtiers, or Hereward and
Torfrida. Two reports out of three were doubtless false, and two
conversations out of three founded on those false reports.
It is best, therefore, to interrupt the thread of the story, by some small
sketch of the state of England after the battle of Hastings; that so we
may, at least, guess at the tenor of Hereward and Torfrida's counsels.
William had, as yet, conquered little more than the South of England:
hardly, indeed, all that; for Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and the
neighboring parts, which had belonged to Sweyn, Harold's brother, were
still insecure; and the noble old city of Exeter, confident in her Roman
walls, did not yield till two years after, in A.
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