Hereward had taken off his helmet likewise, and the
contrast between the two was as striking as the completeness of each of
them in his own style of beauty. It was the contrast between the
slow-hound and the deer-hound; each alike high bred; but the former,
short, sturdy, cheerful, and sagacious; the latter tall, stately,
melancholy, and not over-wise withal.
Waltheof was a full head and shoulders taller than Hereward,--one of the
tallest men of his generation, and of a strength which would have been
gigantic, but for the too great length of neck and limb, which made him
loose and slow in body, as he was somewhat loose and slow in mind. An old
man's child, although that old man was as one of the old giants, there was
a vein of weakness in him, which showed in the arched eyebrow, the sleepy
pale blue eye, the small soft mouth, the lazy voice, the narrow and lofty
brain over a shallow brow. His face was not that of a warrior, but of a
saint in a painted window; and to his own place he went, and became a
saint, in his due time. But that he could outgeneral William, that he
could even manage Gospatrick and his intrigues Hereward expected as little
as that his own nephews Edwin and Morcar could do it.
"I have to thank you, noble sir," said Waltheof, languidly, "for sending
your knights to our rescue when we were really hard bestead,--I fear much
by our own fault.
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