ver at the first, sixteen thousand at the second, and twenty-four thousand on the third trip, in order to buy peace.
Olaf afterwards, however, embraced Christianity and gave up fighting as a business, leaving the ring entirely to Sweyn, his former partner from Denmark, who continued to do business as before.
The historian says that the invasion of England by the Norwegians and Danes was fully equal to the assassination, arson, and rapine of the Indians of North America. A king who would permit such cruel cuttings-up as these wicked animals were guilty of on the fair face of old England, should live in history only as an invertebrate, a royal failure, a decayed mollusk, and the dropsical head of a tottering dynasty.
In order to strengthen his feeble forces, Ethelred allied himself, in 1001, to Richard II., Duke of Normandy, and married his daughter Emma, but the Danes continued to make night hideous and elope with ladies whom they had never met before. It was a sad time in the history of England, and poor Emma wept many a hot and bitter tear as she yielded one jewel after another to the pawnbroker in order to buy off the coarse and hateful Danes.
If Ethelred were to know how he is regarded by the historian who pens these lines, he would
