And GUTHRUM was an honourable chief who well deserved that clemency; for, ever afterwards he was loyal and faithful to the king.

The Danes under him were faithful too.

They plundered and burned no more, but worked like honest men.

They ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and led good honest English lives.

And I hope the children of those Danes played, many a time, with Saxon children in the sunny fields; and that Danish young men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married them; and that English travellers, benighted at the doors of Danish cottages, often went in for shelter until morning; and that Danes and Saxons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of KING ALFRED THE GREAT.
All the Danes were not like these under GUTHRUM; for, after some years, more of them came over, in the old plundering and burning way--among them a fierce pirate of the name of HASTINGS, who had the boldness to sail up the Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships.