brought the provinces into such tranquillity that he even ordered golden bracelets to be suspended at the crossings 01 the highways to tempt the cupidity of travellers, and no one dared take them. King Alfred's clemency and the Danes' faithlessness. In the year of our Lord 893, the pagans who had settled in Northumberland and East-Anglia made peace with king Alfred, confirming it by solemn oaths and giving of hostages; nevertheless they broke the league, and whensoever the army of pagans which had settled in Kent went forth from their defences to pillage, the former, either in conjunction with them or by themselves, ceased not to commit rapine wheresoever they could. On hearing of which, king Alfred marched into Kent with his army and pitched his camp between the two armies of the pagans, that, if haply they should seek the open country, either for booty or for battle, he might bring them to an engagement. But the pagans, sometimes with their cavalry and sometimes with their foot, committed constant depredations in those parts where they knew the king's forces to be absent. Nevertheless the king often fell in with them while engaged in these expeditions, and committed great slaughter among them. They therefore quitted Kent and fled to their countryman Hastein, who had wintered at Middleton, whither the king hotly pursued them, and did not cease till he had driven them, together with the cruel Dane Hastein, into the fortification which the latter had recently constructed there. The king straightway laid siege to the fort, and erecting his machines around it, applied his whole mind to reducing it. Losing all hope of defending the place, Hastein the Dane began to consider in what way he mi*ht, by falsehood, deceive the king's clemency. Sending, therefore, messengers to the king, he gave hostages and promised on his oath, that if he might be suffered to depart, he would, for the time to come, refrain from disquieting the realm of England; and the more to assure' the king, he sent him his two sons, who were in their boyhood, that if he wished he might imbue them with the sacraments of faith and of baptism. The most pious king, who was always more solicitous to deliver the souls of the pagans than to slay them, acquiesced in his request; and after the boys were regenerated