But the spring of the year 1006 bade fair to atone for the past. It was bright and balmy. May was just such a month as the poets love to sing, and June, rich in its promise of fruit, had passed when the events we are about to relate occurred. At this time there was some hope amongst the people that God had at length heard the petition breathed so often in the penitential wail of the Litany--"From the cruelty of our pagan enemies, good Lord, deliver us"--and they forgot that the massacre on St. Brice's night yet cried for vengeance.