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easily; take your pen and write."

The boy wrote on

all day, and when evening came still the book was not finished, and the master was very weary. It grew dark, and the boy laid down his pen and said, "There is still one sentence not written, dear master." Bede repeated the sentence to the boy. Then he begged his scholars to lift him off his bed and lay him on the stone floor in the place where he was accustomed to kneel when he prayed. They did as he desired, and very shortly afterwards he died; and all who were with him wondered at his great peace and content.

5. THE DANES (A.D. 833-877).

1. In the old times about which we have been reading there was no one king who ruled over the whole country of England. Now not only England, but Wales, Scotland, Ireland, India, Canada, and Australia, and many other distant lands, are under one English sovereign, Queen Victoria; but then there were many separate kingdoms in England, and each kingdom had its own king.

2. These kings were generally quarrelling and fighting one against the other, while the Christian teachers were always trying to bring them together, and to draw all Englishmen into one kingdom. At last King Egbert, the ancestor of Queen Victoria, managed, about a thousand years before she was born, to make himself lord of all the kingdoms of England;

and his descendants have been rulers of England ever since, except for short seasons, when they have proved too weak or too untrustworthy.

3. Egbert was a great ruler and a great fighter; yet it was no easy matter to keep all his different kingdoms in order; and, over and above the trouble he had with them, he was much tormented by some new enemies who began to attack England. These new enemies were called the Danes; they came from the cold countries in the north of Europe-from Sweden and Norway and Denmark. They were more terrible than any of the enemies who had attacked England before. They were very strong, and tall and fierce. They were such men as the English had been before they had become Christians, and they hated all Christians, as the English had once done.

4. The country of the Danes was poor, and did not grow much food for them to eat; and so they coveted the riches of other countries. They were wonderful sailors. They sailed up the mouths of the English rivers as far as the ships could go. Then they strode off to the first church, or monastery, or farm that they could see, burnt the houses and killed all the men who were working about, and seized the gold and silver, the horses and cattle, for their own use. Then they mounted on the horses and rode away to their ships, driving the cattle before them.

5. These were the terrible enemies that King Egbert had to fight against, and after his death they came oftener and oftener, landing where no man expected them. Egbert's son and his grandsons fought hard

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to keep them out; but the Danes were too strong, and in the end they came in thousands, as the English had come before, and settled down to live in Norfolk and Suffolk.

6. There was a young English king in those parts whose name was Edmund. The Danes landed in his country, and after killing and robbing his people, they took King Edmund prisoner. They told him he must give up the Christian religion and worship Woden and Thor, the gods of his own ancestors. But King Edmund said he would rather die. So they stripped his clothes off him, and tied him to a tree, and beat him cruelly with rods; and then, when they were tired of scourging him, they stood a little way off and shot arrows into him. At last they struck his head off, and so the poor king's sufferings were ended.

6. KING ALFRED THE GREAT (B. 849; D. 901).

1. King Alfred was one of the noblest and wisest kings who ever governed England, and that is why we call him Alfred the Great. He was not master of the whole of England, as his grandfather Egbert had been. The Danes had conquered the greater part of the land by this time, and Alfred was only king of the south country. His kingdom was called Wessex-the "country of the West Saxons." At last the Danes overran Wessex also, and many of the people of the country fled to the sea-coast and took ship and sailed across the sea to France.

2. King Alfred himself, with a few faithful followers, went away and hid in the marsh lands that are about Athelney, in Somersetshire.

There he lived

like a homeless beggar. He wandered about from one hiding-place to another, amongst the swamps and forests which then covered great parts of England.

3. One day he took shelter in the cottage of a peasant-woman. The good woman was busy baking some cakes, and presently, as Alfred was sitting by the fire, she asked him to mind the cakes while she was away, and turn them over when they began to get brown. King Alfred promised willingly enough, but he began to think of all the troubles of his kingdom. He quite forgot the cakes, which burned first brown and then black. Then suddenly the good woman came back, and smelt her cakes burning on the hearth, and she flew into a great passion, and turned upon the king, and called him a "lazy loon," and boxed his ears. But the king knew it was wrong of him not to be more careful when she had been so kind to him, and was not at all angry, but begged her forgiveness for his carelessness.

4. When summer came, the king's followers gathered round him again. Then Alfred dressed himself like a poor minstrel, and took his harp in his hand, and stole away, and came into the camp of the Danes, that he might learn all their plans. He played so beautifully that the Danes took him to the tent where their king and his chiefs were feasting and making plans for the war. They went on talking while he played, till Alfred had heard all their secrets. Then

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