This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net 

BOOK XII. 

THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS 

CHAPTER I. 

In the heart of the forest land in which Hilda's abode was situated, a
gloomy pool reflected upon its stagnant waters the still shadows of
the autumnal foliage.  As is common in ancient forests in the
neighbourhood of men's wants, the trees were dwarfed in height by
repeated loppings, and the boughs sprang from the hollow, gnarled
boles of pollard oaks and beeches; the trunks, vast in girth, and
covered with mosses and whitening canker-stains, or wreaths of ivy,
spoke of the most remote antiquity: but the boughs which their
lingering and mutilated life put forth, were either thin and feeble