initial commit of ebook 7681HEADmain

1 files changed, 2547 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/7681.txt b/7681.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..058425e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7681.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2547 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook Harold, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Book 10.
+#109 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Harold, Book 10.
+       The Last Of The Saxon Kings
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7681]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 8, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAROLD, BY LYTTON, BOOK 10 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+
+THE SACRIFICE ON THE ALTAR.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The good Bishop Alred, now raised to the See of York, had been
+summoned from his cathedral seat by Edward, who had indeed undergone a
+severe illness, during the absence of Harold; and that illness had
+been both preceded and followed by mystical presentiments of the evil
+days that were to fall on England after his death.  He had therefore
+sent for the best and the holiest prelate in his realm, to advise and
+counsel with.
+
+The bishop had returned to his lodging in London (which was in a
+Benedictine Abbey, not far from the Aldgate) late one evening, from
+visiting the King at his rural palace of Havering; and he was seated
+alone in his cell, musing over an interview with Edward, which had
+evidently much disturbed him, when the door was abruptly thrown open,
+and pushing aside in haste the monk, who was about formally to
+announce him, a man so travel-stained in garb, and of a mien so
+disordered, rushed in, that Alred gazed at first as on a stranger, and
+not till the intruder spoke did he recognise Harold the Earl.  Even
+then, so wild was the Earl's eye, so dark his brow, and so livid his
+cheek, that it rather seemed the ghost of the man than the man
+himself.  Closing the door on the monk, the Earl stood a moment on the
+threshold, with a breast heaving with emotions which he sought in vain
+to master; and, as if resigning the effort, he sprang forward, clasped
+the prelate's knees, bowed his head on his lap, and sobbed aloud.  The
+good bishop, who had known all the sons of Godwin from their infancy,
+and to whom Harold was as dear as his own child, folding his hands
+over the Earl's head, soothingly murmured a benediction.
+
+"No, no," cried the Earl, starting to his feet, and tossing the
+dishevelled hair from his eyes, "bless me not yet!  Hear my tale
+first, and then say what comfort, what refuge, thy Church can bestow!"
+
+Hurriedly then the Earl poured forth the dark story, already known to
+the reader,--the prison at Belrem, the detention at William's court,
+the fears, the snares, the discourse by the riverside, the oath over
+the relics.  This told, he continued, "I found myself in the open air,
+and knew not, till the light of the sun smote me, what might have
+passed into my soul.  I was, before, as a corpse which a witch raises
+from the dead, endows with a spirit not its own--passive to her hand--
+life-like, not living.  Then, then it was as if a demon had passed
+from my body, laughing scorn at the foul things it had made the clay
+do.  O, father, father! is there not absolution from this oath,--an
+oath I dare not keep? rather perjure myself than betray my land!"
+
+The prelate's face was as pale as Harold's, and it was some moments
+before he could reply.
+
+"The Church can loose and unloose--such is its delegated authority.
+But speak on; what saidst thou at the last to William?"
+
+"I know not, remember not--aught save these words.  'Now, then, give
+me those for whom I placed myself in thy power; let me restore Haco to
+his fatherland, and Wolnoth to his mother's kiss, and wend home my
+way.'  And, saints in heaven! what was the answer of this caitiff
+Norman, with his glittering eye and venomed smile?  'Haco thou shalt
+have, for he is an orphan and an uncle's love is not so hot as to burn
+from a distance; but Wolnoth, thy mother's son, must stay with me as a
+hostage for thine own faith.  Godwin's hostages are released; Harold's
+hostage I retain: it is but a form, yet these forms are the bonds of
+princes.'
+
+"I looked at him, and his eye quailed.  And I said, 'That is not in
+the compact.'  And William answered, 'No, but it is the seal to it.'
+Then I turned from the Duke and I called my brother to my side, and I
+said, 'Over the seas have I come for thee.  Mount thy steed and ride
+by my side, for I will not leave the land without thee.'  And Wolnoth
+answered, 'Nay, Duke William tells me that he hath made treaties with
+thee, for which I am still to be the hostage; and Normandy has grown
+my home, and I love William as my lord.'  Hot words followed, and
+Wolnoth, chafed, refused entreaty and command, and suffered me to see
+that his heart was not with England!  O, mother, mother, how shall I
+meet thine eye!  So I returned with Haco.  The moment I set foot on my
+native England, that moment her form seemed to rise from the tall
+cliffs, her voice to speak in the winds!  All the glamour by which I
+had been bound, forsook me; and I sprang forward in scorn, above the
+fear of the dead men's bones.  Miserable overcraft of the snarer!  Had
+my simple word alone bound me, or that word been ratified after slow
+and deliberate thought, by the ordinary oaths that appeal to God, far
+stronger the bond upon my soul than the mean surprise, the covert
+tricks, the insult and the mocking fraud.  But as I rode on, the oath
+pursued me--pale spectres mounted behind me on my steed, ghastly
+fingers pointed from the welkin; and then suddenly, O my father--I
+who, sincere in my simple faith, had, as thou knowest too well, never
+bowed submissive conscience to priest and Church--then suddenly I felt
+the might of some power, surer guide than that haughty conscience
+which had so in the hour of need betrayed me!  Then I recognised that
+supreme tribunal, that mediator between Heaven and man, to which I
+might come with the dire secret of my soul, and say, as I say now, on
+my bended knee, O father--father--bid me die, or absolve me from my
+oath!"
+
+Then Alred rose erect, and replied, "Did I need subterfuge, O son, I
+would say, that William himself hath released thy bond, in detaining
+the hostage against the spirit of the guilty compact; that in the very
+words themselves of the oath, lies the release--'if God aid thee.'
+God aids no child to parricide--and thou art England's child!  But all
+school casuistry is here a meanness.  Plain is the law, that oaths
+extorted by compulsion, through fraud and in fear, the Church hath the
+right to loose: plainer still the law of God and of man, that an oath
+to commit crime it is a deadlier sin to keep than to forfeit.
+Wherefore, not absolving thee from the misdeed of a vow that, if
+trusting more to God's providence and less to man's vain strength and
+dim wit, thou wouldst never have uttered even for England's sake--
+leaving her to the angels;--not, I say, absolving thee from that sin,
+but pausing yet to decide what penance and atonement to fix to its
+committal, I do in the name of the Power whose priest I am, forbid
+thee to fulfil the oath; I do release and absolve thee from all
+obligation thereto.  And if in this I exceed my authority as Romish
+priest, I do but accomplish my duties as living man.  To these grey
+hairs I take the sponsorship.  Before this holy cross, kneel, O my
+son, with me, and pray that a life of truth and virtue may atone the
+madness of an hour."
+
+So by the crucifix knelt the warrior and the priest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+All other thought had given way to Harold's impetuous yearning to
+throw himself upon the Church, to hear his doom from the purest and
+wisest of its Saxon preachers.  Had the prelate deemed his vow
+irrefragable, he would have died the Roman's death, rather than live
+the traitor's life; and strange indeed was the revolution created in
+this man's character, that he, "so self-dependent," he who had
+hitherto deemed himself his sole judge below of cause and action, now
+felt the whole life of his life committed to the word of a cloistered
+shaveling.  All other thought had given way to that fiery impulse--
+home, mother, Edith, king, power, policy, ambition!  Till the weight
+was from his soul, he was as an outlaw in his native land.  But when
+the next sun rose, and that awful burthen was lifted from his heart
+and his being--when his own calm sense, returning, sanctioned the fiat
+of the priest,--when, though with deep shame and rankling remorse at
+the memory of the vow, he yet felt exonerated, not from the guilt of
+having made, but the deadlier guilt of fulfilling it--all the objects
+of existence resumed their natural interest, softened and chastened,
+but still vivid in the heart restored to humanity.  But from that
+time, Harold's stern philosophy and stoic ethics were shaken to the
+dust; re-created, as it were, by the breath of religion, he adopted
+its tenets even after the fashion of his age.  The secret of his
+shame, the error of his conscience, humbled him.  Those unlettered
+monks whom he had so despised, how had he lost the right to stand
+aloof from their control! how had his wisdom, and his strength, and
+his courage, met unguarded the hour of temptation!
+
+Yes, might the time come, when England could spare him from her side!
+when he, like Sweyn the outlaw, could pass a pilgrim to the Holy
+Sepulchre, and there, as the creed of the age taught, win full pardon
+for the single lie of his truthful life, and regain the old peace of
+his stainless conscience!
+
+There are sometimes event and season in the life of man the hardest
+and most rational, when he is driven perforce to faith the most
+implicit and submissive; as the storm drives the wings of the petrel
+over a measureless sea, till it falls tame, and rejoicing at refuge,
+on the sails of some lonely ship.  Seasons when difficulties, against
+which reason seems stricken into palsy, leave him bewildered in dismay
+--when darkness, which experience cannot pierce, wraps the conscience,
+as sudden night wraps the traveller in the desert--when error
+entangles his feet in its inextricable web--when, still desirous of
+the right, he sees before him but a choice of evil; and the Angel of
+the Past, with a flaming sword, closes on him the gates of the Future.
+Then, Faith flashes on him, with a light from the cloud.  Then, he
+clings to Prayer as a drowning wretch to the plank.  Then, that solemn
+authority which clothes the Priest, as the interpreter between the
+soul and the Divinity, seizes on the heart that trembles with terror
+and joy; then, that mysterious recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice,
+of purifying lustration (mystery which lies hid in the core of all
+religions), smoothes the frown on the Past, removes the flaming sword
+from the future.  The Orestes escapes from the hounding Furies, and
+follows the oracle to the spot where the cleansing dews shall descend
+on the expiated guilt.
+
+He who hath never known in himself, nor marked in another, such
+strange crisis in human fate, cannot judge of the strength and the
+weakness it bestows.  But till he can so judge, the spiritual part of
+all history is to him a blank scroll, a sealed volume.  He cannot
+comprehend what drove the fierce Heathen, cowering and humbled, into
+the fold of the Church; what peopled Egypt with eremites; what lined
+the roads of Europe and Asia with pilgrim homicides; what, in the
+elder world, while Jove yet reigned on Olympus, is couched in the dim
+traditions of the expiation of Apollo, the joy-god, descending into
+Hades; or why the sinner went blithe and light-hearted from the
+healing lustrations of Eleusis.  In all these solemn riddles of the
+Jove world and the Christ's is involved the imperious necessity that
+man hath of repentance and atonement: through their clouds, as a
+rainbow, shines the covenant that reconciles the God and the man.
+
+Now Life with strong arms plucked the reviving Harold to itself.
+Already the news of his return had spread through the city, and his
+chamber soon swarmed with joyous welcomes and anxious friends.  But
+the first congratulations over, each had tidings that claimed his
+instant attention, to relate.  His absence had sufficed to loosen half
+the links of that ill-woven empire.
+
+All the North was in arms.  Northumbria had revolted as one man, from
+the tyrannous cruelty of Tostig; the insurgents had marched upon York;
+Tostig had fled in dismay, none as yet knew whither.  The sons of
+Algar had sallied forth from their Mercian fortresses, and were now in
+the ranks of the Northumbrians, who it was rumoured had selected
+Morcar (the elder) in the place of Tostig.
+
+Amidst these disasters, the King's health was fast decaying; his mind
+seemed bewildered and distraught; dark ravings of evil portent that
+had escaped from his lip in his mystic reveries and visions, had
+spread abroad, bandied with all natural exaggerations, from lip to
+lip.  The country was in one state of gloomy and vague apprehension.
+
+But all would go well, now Harold the great Earl--Harold the stout,
+and the wise, and the loved--had come back to his native land!
+
+In feeling himself thus necessary to England,--all eyes, all hopes,
+all hearts turned to him, and to him alone,--Harold shook the evil
+memories from his soul, as a lion shakes the dews from his mane.  His
+intellect, that seemed to have burned dim and through smoke in scenes
+unfamiliar to its exercise, rose at once equal to the occasion.  His
+words reassured the most despondent.  His orders were prompt and
+decisive.  While, to and fro, went forth his bodes and his riders, he
+himself leaped on his horse, and rode fast to Havering.
+
+At length that sweet and lovely retreat broke on his sight, as a bower
+through the bloom of a garden.  This was Edward's favourite abode: he
+had built it himself for his private devotions, allured by its woody
+solitudes and gloom of its copious verdure.  Here it was said, that
+once that night, wandering through the silent glades, and musing on
+heaven, the loud song of the nightingales had disturbed his devotions;
+with vexed and impatient soul, he had prayed that the music might be
+stilled: and since then, never more the nightingale was heard in the
+shades of Havering!  Threading the woodland, melancholy yet glorious
+with the hues of autumn, Harold reached the low and humble gate of the
+timber edifice, all covered with creepers and young ivy; and in a few
+moments more he stood in the presence of the King.
+
+Edward raised himself with pain from the couch on which he was
+reclined [204], beneath a canopy supported by columns and surmounted
+by carved symbols of the bell towers of Jerusalem: and his languid
+face brightened at the sight of Harold.  Behind the King stood a man
+with a Danish battle-axe in his hand, the captain of the royal house-
+carles, who, on a sign from the King, withdrew.
+
+"Thou art come back, Harold," said Edward then, in a feeble voice; and
+the Earl drawing near, was grieved and shocked at the alteration of
+his face.  "Thou art come back, to aid this benumbed hand, from which
+the earthly sceptre is about to fall.  Hush! for it is so, and I
+rejoice."  Then examining Harold's features, yet pale with recent
+emotions, and now saddened by sympathy with the King, he resumed:
+"Well, man of this world, that went forth confiding in thine own
+strength, and in the faith of men of the world like thee,--well, were
+my warnings prophetic, or art thou contented with thy mission?"
+
+"Alas!" said Harold, mournfully.  "Thy wisdom was greater than mine, O
+King; and dread the snares laid for me and our native land, under
+pretext of a promise made by thee to Count William, that he should
+reign in England, should he be your survivor."
+
+Edward's face grew troubled and embarrassed.  "Such promise," he said,
+falteringly, "when I knew not the laws of England, nor that a realm
+could not pass like house and hyde by a man's single testament, might
+well escape from my thoughts, never too bent upon earthly affairs.
+But I marvel not that my cousin's mind is more tenacious and mundane.
+And verily, in those vague words, and from thy visit, I see the Future
+dark with fate and crimson with blood."
+
+Then Edward's eyes grew locked and set, staring into space; and even
+that reverie, though it awed him, relieved Harold of much disquietude,
+for he rightly conjectured, that on waking from it Edward would press
+him no more as to those details, and dilemmas of conscience, of which
+he felt that the arch-worshipper of relics was no fitting judge.
+
+When the King, with a heavy sigh, evinced return from the world of
+vision, he stretched forth to Harold his wan, transparent hand, and
+said:
+
+"Thou seest the ring on this finger; it comes to me from above, a
+merciful token to prepare my soul for death.  Perchance thou mayest
+have heard that once an aged pilgrim stopped me on my way from God's
+House, and asked for alms--and I, having nought else on my person to
+bestow, drew from my finger a ring, and gave it to him, and the old
+man went his way, blessing me."
+
+"I mind me well of thy gentle charity," said the Earl; "for the
+pilgrim bruited it abroad as he passed, and much talk was there of
+it."
+
+The King smiled faintly.  "Now this was years ago.  It so chanced this
+year, that certain Englishers, on their way from the Holy Land, fell
+in with two pilgrims--and these last questioned them much of me.  And
+one, with face venerable and benign, drew forth a ring and said, 'When
+thou reachest England, give thou this to the King's own hand, and say,
+by this token, that on Twelfth-Day Eve he shall be with me.  For what
+he gave to me, will I prepare recompense without bound; and already
+the saints deck for the new comer the halls where the worm never gnaws
+and the moth never frets.'  'And who,' asked my subjects amazed, 'who
+shall we say, speaketh thus to us?'  And the pilgrim answered, 'He on
+whose breast leaned the Son of God, and my name is John!' [205]
+Wherewith the apparition vanished.  This is the ring I gave to the
+pilgrim; on the fourteenth night from thy parting, miraculously
+returned to me.  Wherefore, Harold, my time here is brief, and I
+rejoice that thy coming delivers me up from the cares of state to the
+preparation of my soul for the joyous day."
+
+Harold, suspecting under this incredible mission some wily device of
+the Norman, who, by thus warning Edward (of whose precarious health he
+was well aware), might induce his timorous conscience to take steps
+for the completion of the old promise,--Harold, we say, thus
+suspecting, in vain endeavoured to combat the King's presentiments,
+but Edward interrupted him, with displeased firmness of look and tone:
+
+"Come not thou, with thy human reasonings, between my soul and the
+messenger divine; but rather nerve and prepare thyself for the dire
+calamities that lie greeding in the days to come!  Be thine, things
+temporal.  All the land is in rebellion.  Anlaf, whom thy coming
+dismissed, hath just wearied me with sad tales of bloodshed and
+ravage.  Go and hear him;--go hear the bodes of thy brother Tostig,
+who wait without in our hall;--go, take axe, and take shield, and the
+men of earth's war, and do justice and right; and on thy return thou
+shalt see with what rapture sublime a Christian King can soar aloft
+from his throne!  Go!"
+
+More moved, and more softened, than in the former day he had been with
+Edward's sincere, if fanatical piety, Harold, turning aside to conceal
+his face, said:
+
+"Would, O royal Edward, that my heart, amidst worldly cares, were as
+pure and serene as thine!  But, at least, what erring mortal may do to
+guard this realm, and face the evils thou foreseest in the Far--that
+will I do; and perchance, then, in my dying hour, God's pardon and
+peace may descend on me!"  He spoke, and went.
+
+The accounts he received from Anlaf (a veteran Anglo-Dane), were
+indeed more alarming than he had yet heard.  Morcar, the bold son of
+Algar, was already proclaimed, by the rebels, Earl of Northumbria; the
+shires of Nottingham, Derby, and Lincoln, had poured forth their hardy
+Dane populations on his behalf.  All Mercia was in arms under his
+brother Edwin; and many of the Cymrian chiefs had already joined the
+ally of the butchered Gryffyth.
+
+Not a moment did the Earl lose in proclaiming the Herr-bann; sheaves
+of arrows were splintered, and the fragments, as announcing the War-
+Fyrd, were sent from thegn to thegn, and town to town.  Fresh
+messengers were despatched to Gurth to collect the whole force of his
+own earldom, and haste by quick marches to London; and, these
+preparations made, Harold returned to the metropolis, and with a heavy
+heart sought his mother, as his next care.
+
+Githa was already prepared for his news; for Haco had of his own
+accord gone to break the first shock of disappointment.  There was in
+this youth a noiseless sagacity that seemed ever provident for Harold.
+With his sombre, smileless cheek, and gloom of beauty, bowed as if
+beneath the weight of some invisible doom, he had already become
+linked indissolubly with the Earl's fate, as its angel,--but as its
+angel of darkness!
+
+To Harold's intense relief, Githa stretched forth her hands as he
+entered, and said, "Thou hast failed me, but against thy will! grieve
+not; I am content!"
+
+"Now our Lady be blessed, mother--"
+
+"I have told her," said Haco, who was standing, with arms folded, by
+the fire, the blaze of which reddened fitfully his hueless countenance
+with its raven hair; "I have told thy mother that Wolnoth loves his
+captivity, and enjoys the cage.  And the lady hath had comfort in my
+words."
+
+"Not in thine only, son of Sweyn, but in those of fate; for before thy
+coming I prayed against the long blind yearning of my heart, prayed
+that Wolnoth might not cross the sea with his kinsmen."
+
+"How!" exclaimed the Earl, astonished.
+
+Githa took his arm, and led him to the farther end of the ample
+chamber, as if out of the hearing of Haco, who turned his face towards
+the fire, and gazed into the fierce blaze with musing, unwinking eyes.
+
+"Couldst thou think, Harold, that in thy journey, that on the errand
+of so great fear and hope, I could sit brooding in my chair, and count
+the stitches on the tremulous hangings?  No; day by day have I sought
+the lore of Hilda, and at night I have watched with her by the fount,
+and the elm, and the tomb; and I know that thou hast gone through dire
+peril; the prison, the war, and the snare; and I know also, that his
+Fylgia hath saved the life of my Wolnoth; for had he returned to his
+native land, he had returned but to a bloody grave!"
+
+"Says Hilda this?" said the Earl, thoughtfully.
+
+"So say the Vala, the rune, and the Scin-laeca! and such is the doom
+that now darkens the brow of Haco!  Seest thou not that the hand of
+death is in the hush of the smileless lip, and the glance of the
+unjoyous eye?"
+
+"Nay, it is but the thought born to captive youth, and nurtured in
+solitary dreams.  Thou hast seen Hilda?--and Edith, my mother?  Edith
+is--"
+
+"Well," said Githa, kindly, for she sympathised with that love which
+Godwin would have condemned, "though she grieved deeply after thy
+departure, and would sit for hours gazing into space, and moaning.
+But even ere Hilda divined thy safe return, Edith knew it; I was
+beside her at the time; she started up, and cried, 'Harold is in
+England!'--'How?--Why thinkest thou so?' said I.  And Edith answered,
+'I feel it by the touch of the earth, by the breath of the air.'  This
+is more than love, Harold.  I knew two twins who had the same instinct
+of each other's comings and goings, and were present each to each even
+when absent: Edith is twin to my soul.  Thou goest to her now, Harold:
+thou wilt find there thy sister Thyra.  The child hath drooped of
+late, and I besought Hilda to revive her, with herb and charm.  Thou
+wilt come back, ere thou departest to aid Tostig, thy brother, and
+tell me how Hilda hath prospered with my ailing child?"
+
+"I will, my mother.  Be cheered!--Hilda is a skilful nurse.  And now
+bless thee, that thou hast not reproached me that my mission failed to
+fulfil my promise.  Welcome even our kinswoman's sayings, sith they
+comfort thee for the loss of thy darling!"
+
+Then Harold left the room, mounted his steed, and rode through the
+town towards the bridge.  He was compelled to ride slowly through the
+streets, for he was recognised; and cheapman and mechanic rushed from
+house and from stall to hail the Man of the Land and the Time.
+
+"All is safe now in England, for Harold is come back!"  They seemed
+joyous as the children of the mariner, when, with wet garments, he
+struggles to shore through the storm.  And kind and loving were
+Harold's looks and brief words, as he rode with vailed bonnet through
+the swarming streets.
+
+At length he cleared the town and the bridge; and the yellowing boughs
+of the orchards drooped over the road towards the Roman home, when, as
+he spurred his steed, he heard behind him hoofs as in pursuit, looked
+back, and beheld Haco.  He drew rein,--"What wantest thou, my nephew?"
+
+"Thee!" answered Haco, briefly, as he gained his side.  "Thy
+companionship."
+
+"Thanks, Haco; but I pray thee to stay in my mother's house, for I
+would fain ride alone."
+
+"Spurn me not from thee, Harold!  This England is to me the land of
+the stranger; in thy mother's house I feel but the more the orphan.
+Henceforth I have devoted to thee my life!  And my life my dead and
+dread father hath left to thee, as a doom or a blessing; wherefore
+cleave I to thy side;--cleave we in life and in death to each other!"
+
+An undefined and cheerless thrill shot through the Earl's heart as the
+youth spoke thus; and the remembrance that Haco's counsel had first
+induced him to abandon his natural hardy and gallant manhood, meet
+wile by wile, and thus suddenly entangle him in his own meshes, had
+already mingled an inexpressible bitterness with his pity and
+affection for his brother's son.  But, struggling against that uneasy
+sentiment, as unjust towards one to whose counsel--however sinister,
+and now repented--he probably owed, at least, his safety and
+deliverance, he replied gently:
+
+"I accept thy trust and thy love, Haco!  Ride with me, then; but
+pardon a dull comrade, for when the soul communes with itself the lip
+is silent."
+
+"True," said Haco, "and I am no babbler.  Three things are ever
+silent: Thought, Destiny, and the Grave."
+
+Each then, pursuing his own fancies, rode on fast, and side by side;
+the long shadows of declining day struggling with a sky of unusual
+brightness, and thrown from the dim forest trees and the distant
+hillocks.  Alternately through shade and through light rode they on;
+the bulls gazing on them from holt and glade, and the boom of the
+bittern sounding in its peculiar mournfulness of toile as it rose from
+the dank pools that glistened in the western sun.
+
+It was always by the rear of the house, where stood the ruined temple,
+so associated with the romance of his life, that Harold approached the
+home of the Vala; and as now the hillock, with its melancholy diadem
+of stones, came in view, Haco for the first time broke the silence.
+
+"Again--as in a dream!" he said, abruptly.  "Hill, ruin, grave-mound--
+but where the tall image of the mighty one?"
+
+"Hast thou then seen this spot before?" asked the Earl.
+
+"Yea, as an infant here was I led by my father Sweyn; here too, from
+thy house yonder, dim seen through the fading leaves, on the eve
+before I left this land for the Norman, here did I wander alone; and
+there, by that altar, did the great Vala of the North chaunt her runes
+for my future."
+
+"Alas! thou too!" murmured Harold; and then he asked aloud, "What said
+she?"
+
+"That thy life and mine crossed each other in the skein; that I should
+save thee from a great peril, and share with thee a greater."
+
+"Ah, youth," answered Harold, bitterly, "these vain prophecies of
+human wit guard the soul from no anger.  They mislead us by riddles
+which our hot hearts interpret according to their own desires.  Keep
+thou fast to youth's simple wisdom, and trust only to the pure spirit
+and the watchful God."
+
+He suppressed a groan as he spoke, and springing from his steed, which
+he left loose, advanced up the hill.  When he had gained the height,
+he halted, and made sign to Haco, who had also dismounted, to do the
+same.  Half way down the side of the slope which faced the ruined
+peristyle, Haco beheld a maiden, still young, and of beauty surpassing
+all that the court of Normandy boasted of female loveliness.  She was
+seated on the sward;--while a girl younger, and scarcely indeed grown
+into womanhood, reclined at her feet, and leaning her cheek upon her
+hand, seemed hushed in listening attention.  In the face of the
+younger girl Haco recognised Thyra, the last-born of Githa, though he
+had but once seen her before--the day ere he left England for the
+Norman court--for the face of the girl was but little changed, save
+that the eye was more mournful, and the cheek was paler.
+
+And Harold's betrothed was singing, in the still autumn air, to
+Harold's sister.  The song chosen was on that subject the most popular
+with the Saxon poets, the mystic life, death, and resurrection of the
+fabled Phoenix, and this rhymeless song, in its old native flow, may
+yet find some grace in the modern ear.
+
+    THE LAY OF THE PHOENIX. [206]
+
+    "Shineth far hence--so
+       Sing the wise elders
+     Far to the fire-east
+       The fairest of lands.
+
+     Daintily dight is that
+       Dearest of joy fields;
+     Breezes all balmy-filled
+       Glide through its groves.
+
+     There to the blest, ope
+       The high doors of heaven,
+     Sweetly sweep earthward
+       Their wavelets of song.
+
+     Frost robes the sward not,
+       Rusheth no hail-steel;
+     Wind-cloud ne'er wanders,
+       Ne'er falleth the rain.
+
+     Warding the woodholt,
+       Girt with gay wonder,
+     Sheen with the plumy shine,
+       Phoenix abides.
+
+     Lord of the Lleod, [207]
+       Whose home is the air,
+     Winters a thousand
+       Abideth the bird.
+
+     Hapless and heavy then
+       Waxeth the hazy wing;
+     Year-worn and old in the
+       Whirl of the earth.
+
+     Then the high holt-top,
+       Mounting, the bird soars;
+     There, where the winds sleep,
+       He buildeth a nest;--
+
+     Gums the most precious, and
+       Balms of the sweetest,
+     Spices and odours, he
+       Weaves in the nest.
+
+     There, in that sun-ark, lo,
+       Waiteth he wistful;
+     Summer comes smiling, lo,
+       Rays smite the pile!
+
+     Burden'd with eld-years, and
+       Weary with slow time,
+     Slow in his odour-nest
+       Burneth the bird.
+
+     Up from those ashes, then,
+       Springeth a rare fruit;
+     Deep in the rare fruit
+       There coileth a worm.
+
+     Weaving bliss-meshes
+       Around and around it,
+     Silent and blissful, the
+       Worm worketh on.
+
+     Lo, from the airy web,
+       Blooming and brightsome,
+     Young and exulting, the
+       Phoenix breaks forth.
+
+     Round him the birds troop,
+       Singing and hailing;
+     Wings of all glories
+       Engarland the king.
+
+     Hymning and hailing,
+       Through forest and sun-air,
+     Hymning and hailing,
+       And speaking him 'King.'
+
+     High flies the phoenix,
+       Escaped from the worm-web
+     He soars in the sunlight,
+       He bathes in the dew.
+
+     He visits his old haunts,
+       The holt and the sun-hill;
+     The founts of his youth, and
+       The fields of his love.
+
+     The stars in the welkin,
+       The blooms on the earth,
+     Are glad in his gladness,
+       Are young in his youth.
+
+     While round him the birds troop,
+       the Hosts of the Himmel, [208]
+     Blisses of music, and
+       Glories of wings;
+
+     Hymning and hailing,
+       And filling the sun-air
+     With music, and glory
+       And praise of the King."
+
+As the lay ceased, Thyra said:
+
+"Ah, Edith, who would not brave the funeral pyre to live again like
+the phoenix!"
+
+"Sweet sister mine," answered Edith, "the singer doth mean to image
+out in the phoenix the rising of our Lord, in whom we all live again."
+
+And Thyra said, mournfully:
+
+"But the phoenix sees once more the haunts of his youth--the things
+and places dear to him in his life before.  Shall we do the same, O
+Edith?"
+
+"It is the persons we love that make beautiful the haunts we have
+known," answered the betrothed.  "Those persons at least we shall
+behold again, and whenever they are--there is heaven."
+
+Harold could restrain himself no longer.  With one bound he was at
+Edith's side, and with one wild cry of joy he clasped her to his
+heart.
+
+"I knew that thou wouldst come to-night--I knew it, Harold," murmured
+the betrothed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+While, full of themselves, Harold and Edith wandered, hand in hand,
+through the neighbouring glades--while into that breast which had
+forestalled, at least, in this pure and sublime union, the wife's
+privilege to soothe and console, the troubled man poured out the tale
+of the sole trial from which he had passed with defeat and shame,--
+Haco drew near to Thyra, and sate down by her side.  Each was
+strangely attracted towards the other; there was something congenial
+in the gloom which they shared in common; though in the girl the
+sadness was soft and resigned, in the youth it was stern and solemn.
+They conversed in whispers, and their talk was strange for companions
+so young; for, whether suggested by Edith's song, or the neighbourhood
+of the Saxon grave-stone, which gleamed on their eyes, grey and wan
+through the crommell, the theme they selected was of death.  As if
+fascinated, as children often are, by the terrors of the Dark King,
+they dwelt on those images with which the northern fancy has
+associated the eternal rest, on--the shroud and the worm, and the
+mouldering bones--on the gibbering ghost, and the sorcerer's spell
+that could call the spectre from the grave.  They talked of the pain
+of the parting soul, parting while earth was yet fair, youth fresh,
+and joy not yet ripened from the blossom--of the wistful lingering
+look which glazing eyes would give to the latest sunlight it should
+behold on earth; and then he pictured the shivering and naked soul,
+forced from the reluctant clay, wandering through cheerless space to
+the intermediate tortures, which the Church taught that none were so
+pure as not for a whole to undergo; and hearing, as it wandered, the
+knell of the muffled bells and the burst of unavailing prayer.  At
+length Haco paused abruptly and said:
+
+"But thou, cousin, hast before thee love and sweet life, and these
+discourses are not for thee."
+
+Thyra shook her head mournfully:
+
+"Not so, Haco; for when Hilda consulted the runes, while, last night,
+she mingled the herbs for my pain, which rests ever hot and sharp
+here," and the girl laid her hand on her breast, "I saw that her face
+grew dark and overcast; and I felt, as I looked, that my doom was set.
+And when thou didst come so noiselessly to my side, with thy sad, cold
+eyes, O Haco, methought I saw the Messenger of Death.  But thou art
+strong, Haco, and life will be long for thee; let us talk of life."
+
+Haco stooped down and pressed his lips upon the girl's pale forehead.
+
+"Kiss me too, Thyra."
+
+The child kissed him, and they sate silent and close by each other,
+while the sun set.
+
+And as the stars rose, Harold and Edith joined them.  Harold's face
+was serene in the starlight, for the pure soul of his betrothed had
+breathed peace into his own; and, in his willing superstition, he felt
+as if, now restored to his guardian angel, the dead men's bones had
+released their unhallowed hold.
+
+But suddenly Edith's hand trembled in his, and her form shuddered.--
+Her eyes were fixed upon those of Haco.
+
+"Forgive me, young kinsman, that I forget thee so long," said the
+Earl.  "This is my brother's son, Edith; thou hast not, that I
+remember, seen him before?"
+
+"Yes, yes;" said Edith, falteringly.
+
+"When, and where?"
+
+Edith's soul answered the question, "In a dream;" but her lips were
+silent.
+
+And Haco, rising, took her by the hand, while the Earl turned to his
+sister--that sister whom he was pledged to send to the Norman court;
+and Thyra said, plaintively:
+
+"Take me in thine arms, Harold, and wrap thy mantle round me, for the
+air is cold."
+
+The Earl lifted the child to his breast, and gazed on her cheek long
+and wistfully; then questioning her tenderly, he took her within the
+house; and Edith followed with Haco.
+
+"Is Hilda within?" asked the son of Sweyn.
+
+"Nay, she hath been in the forest since noon," answered Edith with an
+effort, for she could not recover her awe of his presence.
+
+"Then," said Haco, halting at the threshold, "I will go across the
+woodland to your house, Harold, and prepare your ceorls for your
+coming."
+
+"I shall tarry here till Hilda returns," answered Harold, and it may
+be late in the night ere I reach home; but Sexwolf already hath my
+orders.  At sunrise we return to London, and thence we march on the
+insurgents."
+
+"All shall be ready.  Farewell, noble Edith; and thou, Thyra my
+cousin, one kiss more to our meeting again."  The child fondly held
+out her arms to him, and as she kissed his cheek whispered:
+
+"In the grave, Haco!"
+
+The young man drew his mantle around him, and moved away.  But he did
+not mount his steed, which still grazed by the road; while Harold's,
+more familiar with the place, had found its way to the stall; nor did
+he take his path through the glades to the house of his kinsman.
+Entering the Druid temple, he stood musing by the Teuton tomb.  The
+night grew deeper and deeper, the stars more luminous and the air more
+hushed, when a voice close at his side, said, clear and abrupt:
+
+"What does Youth the restless, by Death the still?"
+
+It was the peculiarity of Haco, that nothing ever seemed to startle or
+surprise him.  In that brooding boyhood, the solemn, quiet, and sad
+experience all fore-armed, of age, had something in it terrible and
+preternatural; so without lifting his eyes from the stone, he
+answered:
+
+"How sayest thou, O Hilda, that the dead are still?"  Hilda placed her
+hand on his shoulder, and stooped to look into his face.
+
+"Thy rebuke is just, son of Sweyn.  In Time, and in the Universe,
+there is no stillness!  Through all eternity the state impossible to
+the soul is repose!--So again thou art in thy native land?"
+
+"And for what end, Prophetess?  I remember, when but an infant, who
+till then had enjoyed the common air and the daily sun, thou didst rob
+me evermore of childhood and youth.  For thou didst say to my father,
+that 'dark was the woof of my fate, and that its most glorious hour
+should be its last!'"
+
+"But thou wert surely too childlike, (see thee now as thou wert then,
+stretched on the grass, and playing with thy father's falcon!)--too
+childlike to heed my words."
+
+"Does the new ground reject the germs of the sower, or the young heart
+the first lessons of wonder and awe?  Since then, Prophetess, Night
+hath been my comrade, and Death my familiar.  Rememberest thou again
+the hour when, stealing, a boy, from Harold's house in his absence--
+the night ere I left my land--I stood on this mound by thy side?  Then
+did I tell thee that the sole soft thought that relieved the
+bitterness of my soul, when all the rest of my kinsfolk seemed to
+behold in me but the heir of Sweyn, the outlaw and homicide, was the
+love that I bore to Harold; but that that love itself was mournful and
+bodeful as the hwata [209] of distant sorrow.  And thou didst take me,
+O Prophetess, to thy bosom, and thy cold kiss touched my lips and my
+brow; and there, beside this altar and grave-mound, by leaf and by
+water, by staff and by song, thou didst bid me take comfort; for that
+as the mouse gnawed the toils of the lion, so the exile obscure should
+deliver from peril the pride and the prince of my House--that, from
+that hour with the skein of his fate should mine be entwined; and his
+fate was that of kings and of kingdoms.  And then, when the joy
+flushed my cheek, and methought youth came back in warmth to the night
+of my soul--then, Hilda, I asked thee if my life would be spared till
+I had redeemed the name of my father.  Thy seidstaff passed over the
+leaves that, burning with fire-sparks, symbolled the life of the man,
+and from the third leaf the flame leaped up and died; and again a
+voice from thy breast, hollow, as if borne from a hill-top afar, made
+answer, 'At thine entrance to manhood life bursts into blaze, and
+shrivels up into ashes.'  So I knew that the doom of the infant still
+weighed unannealed on the years of the man; and I come here to my
+native land as to glory and the grave.  But," said the young man, with
+a wild enthusiasm, "still with mine links the fate which is loftiest
+in England; and the rill and the river shall rush in one to the
+Terrible Sea."
+
+"I know not that," answered Hilda, pale, as if in awe of herself: "for
+never yet hath the rune, or the fount or the tomb, revealed to me
+clear and distinct the close of the great course of Harold; only know
+I through his own stars his glory and greatness; and where glory is
+dim, and greatness is menaced, I know it but from the stars of others,
+the rays of whose influence blend with his own.  So long, at least, as
+the fair and the pure one keeps watch in the still House of Life, the
+dark and the troubled one cannot wholly prevail.  For Edith is given
+to Harold as the Fylgia, that noiselessly blesses and saves: and thou--"
+Hilda checked herself, and lowered her hood over her face, so that
+it suddenly became invisible.
+
+"And I?" asked Haco, moving near to her side.
+
+"Away, son of Sweyn; thy feet trample the grave of the mighty dead!"
+
+Then Hilda lingered no longer, but took her way towards the house.
+Haco's eye followed her in silence.  The cattle, grazing in the great
+space of the crumbling peristyle, looked up as she passed; the watch-
+dogs, wandering through the star-lit columns, came snorting round
+their mistress.  And when she had vanished within the house, Haco
+turned to his steed:
+
+"What matters," he murmured, "the answer which the Vala cannot or dare
+not give?  To me is not destined the love of woman, nor the ambition
+of life.  All I know of human affection binds me to Harold; all I know
+of human ambition is to share in his fate.  This love is strong as
+hate, and terrible as doom,--it is jealous, it admits no rival.  As
+the shell and the sea-weed interlaced together, we are dashed on the
+rushing surge; whither? oh, whither?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"I tell thee, Hilda," said the Earl, impatiently, "I tell thee that I
+renounce henceforth all faith save in Him whose ways are concealed
+from our eyes.  Thy seid and thy galdra have not guarded me against
+peril, nor armed me against sin.  Nay, perchance--but peace: I will no
+more tempt the dark art, I will no more seek to disentangle the awful
+truth from the juggling lie.  All so foretold me I will seek to
+forget,--hope from no prophecy, fear from no warning.  Let the soul go
+to the future under the shadow of God!"
+
+"Pass on thy way as thou wilt, its goal is the same, whether seen or
+unmarked.  Peradventure thou art wise," said the Vala, gloomily.
+
+"For my country's sake, heaven be my witness, not my own," resumed the
+Earl, "I have blotted my conscience and sullied my truth.  My country
+alone can redeem me, by taking my life as a thing hallowed evermore to
+her service.  Selfish ambition do I lay aside, selfish power shall
+tempt me no more; lost is the charm that I beheld in a throne, and,
+save for Edith--"
+
+"No! not even for Edith," cried the betrothed, advancing, "not even
+for Edith shalt thou listen to other voice than that of thy country
+and thy soul."
+
+The Earl turned round abruptly, and his eyes were moist.  "O Hilda,"
+he cried, "see henceforth my only Vala; let that noble heart alone
+interpret to us the oracles of the future."
+
+The next day Harold returned with Haco and a numerous train of his
+house-carles to the city.  Their ride was as silent as that of the day
+before; but on reaching Southwark, Harold turned away from the bridge
+towards the left, gained the river-side, and dismounted at the house
+of one of his lithsmen (a franklin, or freed ceorl).  Leaving there
+his horse, he summoned a boat, and, with Haco, was rowed over towards
+the fortified palace which then rose towards the west of London,
+jutting into the Thames, and which seems to have formed the outwork of
+the old Roman city.  The palace, of remotest antiquity, and blending
+all work and architecture, Roman, Saxon, and Danish, had been repaired
+by Canute; and from a high window in the upper story, where were the
+royal apartments, the body of the traitor Edric Streone (the founder
+of the house of Godwin) had been thrown into the river.
+
+"Whither go we, Harold?" asked the son of Sweyn.
+
+"We go to visit the young Atheling, the natural heir to the Saxon
+throne," replied Harold in a firm voice.  "He lodges in the old palace
+of our kings."
+
+"They say in Normandy that the boy is imbecile."
+
+"That is not true," returned Harold.  "I will present thee to him,--
+judge."
+
+Haco mused a moment and said:
+
+"Methinks I divine thy purpose; is it not formed on the sudden,
+Harold?"
+
+"It was the counsel of Edith," answered Harold, with evident emotion.
+"And yet, if that counsel prevail, I may lose the power to soften the
+Church and to call her mine."
+
+"So thou wouldest sacrifice even Edith for thy country."
+
+"Since I have sinned, methinks I could," said the proud man humbly.
+
+The boat shot into a little creek, or rather canal, which then ran
+inland, beside the black and rotting walls of the fort.  The two Earl-
+born leapt ashore, passed under a Roman arch, entered a court the
+interior of which was rudely filled up by early Saxon habitations of
+rough timber work, already, since the time of Canute, falling into
+decay, (as all things did which came under the care of Edward,) and
+mounting a stair that ran along the outside of the house, gained a low
+narrow door, which stood open.  In the passage within were one or two
+of the King's house-carles who had been assigned to the young
+Atheling, with liveries of blue and Danish axes, and some four or five
+German servitors, who had attended his father from the Emperor's
+court.  One of these last ushered the noble Saxons into a low, forlorn
+ante-hall; and there, to Harold's surprise they found Alred the
+Archbishop of York, and three thegns of high rank, and of lineage
+ancient and purely Saxon.
+
+Alred approached Harold with a faint smile on his benign face:
+
+"Methinks, and may I think aright!--thou comest hither with the same
+purpose as myself, and you noble thegns."
+
+"And that purpose?"
+
+"Is to see and to judge calmly, if, despite his years, we may find in
+the descendant of the Ironsides such a prince as we may commend to our
+decaying King as his heir, and to the Witan as a chief fit to defend
+the land."
+
+"Thou speakest the cause of my own coming.  With your ears will I
+hear, with your eyes will I see; as ye judge, will judge I," said
+Harold, drawing the prelate towards the thegns, so that they might
+hear his answer.
+
+The chiefs, who belonged to a party that had often opposed Godwin's
+House, had exchanged looks of fear and trouble when Harold entered;
+but at his words their frank faces showed equal surprise and pleasure.
+
+Harold presented to them his nephew, with whose grave dignity of
+bearing beyond his years they were favourably impressed, though the
+good bishop sighed when he saw in his face the sombre beauty of the
+guilty sire.  The group then conversed anxiously on the declining
+health of the King, the disturbed state of the realm, and the
+expediency, if possible, of uniting all suffrages in favour of the
+fittest successor.  And in Harold's voice and manner, as in Harold's
+heart, there was nought that seemed conscious of his own mighty stake
+and just hopes in that election.  But as time wore, the faces of the
+thegns grew overcast; proud men and great satraps [210] were they, and
+they liked it ill that the boy-prince kept them so long in the dismal
+ante-room.
+
+At length the German officer, who had gone to announce their coming,
+returned; and in words, intelligible indeed from the affinity between
+Saxon and German, but still disagreeably foreign to English ears,
+requested them to follow him into the presence of the Atheling.
+
+In a room yet retaining the rude splendour with which it had been
+invested by Canute, a handsome boy, about the age of thirteen or
+fourteen, but seeming much younger, was engaged in the construction of
+a stuffed bird, a lure for a young hawk that stood blindfold on its
+perch.  The employment made so habitual a part of the serious
+education of youth, that the thegns smoothed their brows at the sight,
+and deemed the boy worthily occupied.  At another end of the room, a
+grave Norman priest was seated at a table on which were books and
+writing implements; he was the tutor commissioned by Edward to teach
+Norman tongue and saintly lore to the Atheling.  A profusion of toys
+strewed the floor, and some children of Edgar's own age were playing
+with them.  His little sister Margaret [211] was seated seriously,
+apart from all the other children, and employed in needlework.
+
+When Alred approached the Atheling, with a blending of reverent
+obeisance and paternal cordiality, the boy carelessly cried, in a
+barbarous jargon, half German, half Norman-French:
+
+"There, come not too near, you scare my hawk.  What are you doing?
+You trample my toys, which the good Norman bishop William sent me as a
+gift from the Duke.  Art thou blind, man?"
+
+"My son," said the prelate kindly, "these are the things of childhood
+--childhood ends sooner with princes than with common men.  Leave thy
+lure and thy toys, and welcome these noble thegns, and address them,
+so please you, in our own Saxon tongue."
+
+"Saxon tongue!--language of villeins! not I.  Little do I know of it,
+save to scold a ceorl or a nurse.  King Edward did not tell me to
+learn Saxon, but Norman! and Godfroi yonder says, that if I know
+Norman well, Duke William will make me his knight.  But I don't desire
+to learn anything more to-day."  And the child turned peevishly from
+thegn and prelate.
+
+The three Saxon lords interchanged looks of profound displeasure and
+proud disgust. But Harold, with an effort over himself, approached,
+and said winningly:
+
+"Edgar the Atheling, thou art not so young but thou knowest already
+that the great live for others.  Wilt thou not be proud to live for
+this fair country, and these noble men, and to speak the language of
+Alfred the Great?"
+
+"Alfred the Great! they always weary me with Alfred the Great," said
+the boy, pouting.  "Alfred the Great, he is the plague of my life! if
+I am Atheling, men are to live for me, not I for them; and if you
+tease me any more, I will run away to Duke William in Rouen; Godfroi
+says I shall never be teased there!"
+
+So saying, already tired of hawk and lure, the child threw himself on
+the floor with the other children, and snatched the toys from their
+hands.
+
+The serious Margaret then rose quietly, and went to her brother, and
+said, in good Saxon:
+
+"Fie! if you behave thus, I shall call you NIDDERING!"  At the threat
+of that word, the vilest in the language--that word which the lowest
+ceorl would forfeit life rather than endure--a threat applied to the
+Atheling of England, the descendant of Saxon heroes--the three thegns
+drew close, and watched the boy, hoping to see that he would start to
+his feet with wrath and in shame.
+
+"Call me what you will, silly sister," said the child, indifferently,
+"I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names."
+
+"Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very
+moustache curling with ire.  "He who can be called niddering shall
+never be crowned king!"
+
+"I don't want to be crowned king, rude man, with your laidly
+moustache: I want to be made knight, and have banderol and baldric.--
+Go away!"
+
+"We go, son," said Alred, mournfully.
+
+And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he
+halted, turned back,--and the child was pointing at him in mimicry,
+while Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure.  The prelate
+shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall.
+
+"Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a
+thegn.  "No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!"
+
+"No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully.  "It is but
+the fault of his nurture and rearing,--a neglected childhood, a Norman
+tutor, German hirelings.  We may remould yet the pliant clay," said
+Harold.
+
+"Nay," returned Alred, "no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo
+what is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature.  Ere the year is
+out the throne will stand empty in our halls."
+
+"Who then," said Haco, abruptly, "who then,--(pardon the ignorance of
+youth wasted in captivity abroad!) who then, failing the Atheling,
+will save this realm from the Norman Duke, who, I know well, counts on
+it as the reaper on the harvest ripening to his sickle?"
+
+"Alas, who then?" murmured Alred.
+
+"Who then?" cried the three thegns, with one voice, "why the
+worthiest, the wisest, the bravest!  Stand forth, Harold the Earl,
+Thou art the man!"  And without awaiting his answer, they strode from
+the hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Around Northampton lay the forces of Morcar, the choice of the Anglo-
+Dane men of Northumbria.  Suddenly there was a shout as to arms from
+the encampment; and Morcar, the young Earl, clad in his link mail,
+save his helmet, came forth, and cried:
+
+"My men are fools to look that way for a foe; yonder lies Mercia,
+behind it the hills of Wales.  The troops that come hitherward are
+those which Edwin my brother brings to our aid."
+
+Morcar's words were carried into the host by his captains and
+warbodes, and the shout changed from alarm into joy.  As the cloud of
+dust through which gleamed the spears of the coming force rolled away,
+and lay lagging behind the march of the host, there rode forth from
+the van two riders.  Fast and far from the rest they rode, and behind
+them, fast as they could, spurred two others, who bore on high, one
+the pennon of Mercia, one the red lion of North Wales.  Right to the
+embankment and palisade which begirt Mortar's camp rode the riders;
+and the head of the foremost was bare, and the guards knew the face of
+Edwin the Comely, Mortar's brother.  Morcar stepped down from the
+mound on which he stood, and the brothers embraced amidst the halloos
+of the forces.
+
+"And welcome, I pray thee," said Morcar, "our kinsman Caradoc, son of
+Gryffyth [212] the bold."
+
+So Morcar reached his hand to Caradoc, stepson to his sister Aldyth,
+and kissed him on the brow, as was the wont of our fathers.  The young
+and crownless prince was scarce out of boyhood, but already his name
+was sung by the bards, and circled in the halls of Gwynedd with the
+Hirlas horn; for he had harried the Saxon borders, and given to fire
+and sword even the fortress of Harold himself.
+
+But while these three interchanged salutations, and ere yet the mixed
+Mercians and Welch had gained the encampment, from a curve in the
+opposite road, towards Towcester and Dunstable, broke the flash of
+mail like a river of light, trumpets and fifes were heard in the
+distance; and all in Morcar's host stood hushed but stern, gazing
+anxious and afar, as the coming armament swept on.  And from the midst
+were seen the Martlets and Cross of England's king, and the Tiger
+heads of Harold; banners which, seen together, had planted victory on
+every tower, on every field, towards which they had rushed on the
+winds.
+
+Retiring, then, to the central mound, the chiefs of the insurgent
+force held their brief council.
+
+The two young Earls, whatever their ancestral renown, being yet new
+themselves to fame and to power, were submissive to the Anglo-Dane
+chiefs, by whom Morcar had been elected.  And these, on recognising
+the standard of Harold, were unanimous in advice to send a peaceful
+deputation, setting forth their wrongs under Tostig, and the justice
+of their cause.  "For the Earl," said Gamel Beorn (the head and front
+of that revolution,)  is a just man, and one who would shed his own
+blood rather than that of any other freeborn dweller in England; and
+he will do us right."
+
+"What, against his own brother?" cried Edwin.
+
+"Against his own brother, if we convince but his reason," returned the
+Anglo-Dane.
+
+And the other chiefs nodded assent.  Caradoc's fierce eyes flashed
+fire; but he played with his torque, and spoke not.
+
+Meanwhile, the vanguard of the King's force had defiled under the very
+walls of Northampton, between the town and the insurgents; and some of
+the light-armed scouts who went forth from Morcar's camp to gaze on
+the procession, with that singular fearlessness which characterised,
+at that period, the rival parties in civil war, returned to say that
+they had seen Harold himself in the foremost line, and that he was not
+in mail.
+
+This circumstance the insurgent thegns received as a good omen; and,
+having already agreed on the deputation, about a score of the
+principal thegns of the north went sedately towards the hostile lines.
+
+By the side of Harold,--armed in mail, with his face concealed by the
+strange Sicilian nose-piece used then by most of the Northern
+nations,--had ridden Tostig, who had joined the Earl on his march,
+with a scanty band of some fifty or sixty of his Danish house-carles.
+All the men throughout broad England that he could command or bribe to
+his cause, were those fifty or sixty hireling Danes.  And it seemed
+that already there was dispute between the brothers, for Harold's face
+was flushed, and his voice stern, as he said, "Rate me as thou wilt,
+brother, but I cannot advance at once to the destruction of my fellow
+Englishmen without summons and attempt at treaty,--as has ever been
+the custom of our ancient heroes and our own House."
+
+"By all the fiends of the North?" exclaimed Tostig, "it is foul shame
+to talk of treaty and summons to robbers and rebels.  For what art
+thou here but for chastisement and revenge?"
+
+"For justice and right, Tostig."
+
+"Ha! thou comest not, then, to aid thy brother?"
+
+"Yes, if justice and right are, as I trust, with him."
+
+Before Tostig could reply, a line was suddenly cleared through the
+armed men, and, with bare heads, and a monk lifting the rood on high,
+amidst the procession advanced the Northumbrian Danes.
+
+"By the red sword of St. Olave!" cried Tostig, "yonder come the
+traitors, Gamel Beorn and Gloneion!  You will not hear them?  If so, I
+will not stay to listen.  I have but my axe for my answer to such
+knaves."
+
+"Brother, brother, those men are the most valiant and famous chiefs in
+thine earldom.  Go, Tostig, thou art not now in the mood to hear
+reason.  Retire into the city; summon its gates to open to the King's
+flag.  I will hear the men."
+
+"Beware how thou judge, save in thy brother's favour!" growled the
+fierce warrior; and, tossing his arm on high with a contemptuous
+gesture, he spurred away towards the gates.
+
+Then Harold, dismounting, stood on the ground, under the standard of
+his King, and round him came several of the Saxon chiefs, who had kept
+aloof during the conference with Tostig.
+
+The Northumbrians approached, and saluted the Earl with grave
+courtesy.
+
+Then Gamel Beorn began.  But much as Harold had feared and foreboded
+as to the causes of complaint which Tostig had given to the
+Northumbrians, all fear, all foreboding, fell short of the horrors now
+deliberately unfolded; not only extortion of tribute the most
+rapacious and illegal, but murder the fiercest and most foul.  Thegns
+of high birth, without offence or suspicion, but who had either
+excited Tostig's jealousy, or resisted his exactions, had been snared
+under peaceful pretexts into his castle [213], and butchered in cold
+blood by his house-carles.  The cruelties of the old heathen Danes
+seemed revived in the bloody and barbarous tale.
+
+"And now," said the thegn, in conclusion, "canst thou condemn us that
+we rose?--no partial rising;--rose all Northumbria!  At first but two
+hundred thegns; strong in our course, we swelled into the might of a
+people.  Our wrongs found sympathy beyond our province, for liberty
+spreads over human hearts as fire over a heath.  Wherever we march,
+friends gather round us.  Thou warrest not on a handful of rebels,--
+half England is with us!"
+
+"And ye,--thegns," answered Harold, "ye have ceased to war against
+Tostig, your Earl.  Ye war now against the King and the Law.  Come
+with your complaints to your Prince and your Witan, and, if they are
+just, ye are stronger than in yonder palisades and streets of steel."
+
+"And so," said Gamel Beorn, with marked emphasis, "now thou art in
+England, O noble Earl,--so are we willing to come.  But when thou wert
+absent from the land, justice seemed to abandon it to force and the
+battle-axe."
+
+"I would thank you for your trust," answered Harold, deeply moved.
+"But justice in England rests not on the presence and life of a single
+man.  And your speech I must not accept as a grace, for it wrongs both
+my King and his Council.  These charges ye have made, but ye have not
+proved them.  Armed men are not proofs; and granting that hot blood
+and mortal infirmity of judgment have caused Tostig to err against you
+and the right, think still of his qualities to reign over men whose
+lands, and whose rivers, lie ever exposed to the dread Northern sea-
+kings.  Where will ye find a chief with arm as strong, and heart as
+dauntless?  By his mother's side he is allied to your own lineage.
+And for the rest, if ye receive him back to his earldom, not only do
+I, Harold in whom you profess to trust, pledge full oblivion of the
+past, but I will undertake, in his name, that he shall rule you well
+for the future, according to the laws of King Canute."
+
+"That will we not hear," cried the thegns, with one voice; while the
+tones of Gamel Beorn, rough with the rattling Danish burr, rose above
+all, "for we were born free.  A proud and bad chief is by us not to be
+endured; we have learned from our ancestors to live free or die!"
+
+A murmur, not of condemnation, at these words, was heard amongst the
+Saxon chiefs round Harold: and beloved and revered as he was, he felt
+that, had he the heart, he had scarce the power, to have coerced those
+warriors to march at once on their countrymen in such a cause.  But
+foreseeing great evil in the surrender of his brother's interests,
+whether by lowering the King's dignity to the demands of armed force,
+or sending abroad in all his fierce passions a man so highly connected
+with Norman and Dane, so vindictive and so grasping, as Tostig, the
+Earl shunned further parley at that time and place.  He appointed a
+meeting in the town with the chiefs; and requested them, meanwhile, to
+reconsider their demands, and at least shape them so as that they
+could be transmitted to the King, who was then on his way to Oxford.
+
+It is in vain to describe the rage of Tostig, when his brother gravely
+repeated to him the accusations against him, and asked for his
+justification.  Justification he could give not.  His idea of law was
+but force, and by force alone he demanded now to be defended.  Harold,
+then, wishing not alone to be judge in his brother's cause, referred
+further discussion to the chiefs of the various towns and shires,
+whose troops had swelled the War-Fyrd; and to them he bade Tostig
+plead his cause.
+
+Vain as a woman, while fierce as a tiger, Tostig assented, and in that
+assembly he rose, his gonna all blazing with crimson and gold, his
+hair all curled and perfumed as for a banquet; and such, in a half-
+barbarous day, the effect of person, especially when backed by warlike
+renown, that the Proceres were half disposed to forget, in admiration
+of the earl's surpassing beauty of form, the dark tales of his hideous
+guilt.  But his passions hurrying him away ere he had gained the
+middle of his discourse, so did his own relation condemn himself, so
+clear became his own tyrannous misdeeds, that the Englishmen murmured
+aloud their disgust, and their impatience would not suffer him to
+close.
+
+"Enough," cried Vebba, the blunt thegn from Saxon Kent; "it is plain
+that neither King nor Witan can replace thee in thine earldom.  Tell
+us not farther of these atrocities; or by're Lady, if the
+Northumbrians had chased thee not, we would."
+
+"Take treasure and ship, and go to Baldwin in Flanders," said Thorold,
+a great Anglo-Dane from Lincolnshire, "for even Harold's name can
+scarce save thee from outlawry."
+
+Tostig glared round on the assembly, and met but one common expression
+in the face of all.
+
+"These are thy henchmen, Harold!" he said through his gnashing teeth,
+without vouchsafing farther word, strode from the council-hall.
+
+That evening he left the town and hurried to tell to Edward the tale
+that had so miscarried with the chiefs.  The next day, the
+Northumbrian delegates were heard; and they made the customary
+proposition in those cases of civil differences, to refer all matters
+to the King and the Witan; each party remaining under arms meanwhile.
+
+This was finally acceded to.  Harold repaired to Oxford, where the
+King (persuaded to the journey by Alred, foreseeing what would come to
+pass) had just arrived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The Witan was summoned in haste.  Thither came the young earls Morcar
+and Edwin, but Caradoc, chafing at the thought of peace, retired into
+Wales with his wild band.
+
+Now, all the great chiefs, spiritual and temporal, assembled in Oxford
+for the decree of that Witan on which depended the peace of England.
+The imminence of the time made the concourse of members entitled to
+vote in the assembly even larger than that which had met for the
+inlawry of Godwin.  There was but one thought uppermost in the minds
+of men, to which the adjustment of an earldom, however mighty, was
+comparatively insignificant--viz., the succession of the kingdom.
+That thought turned instinctively and irresistibly to Harold.
+
+The evident and rapid decay of the King; the utter failure of all male
+heir in the House of Cerdic, save only the boy Edgar; whose character
+(which throughout life remained puerile and frivolous) made the
+minority which excluded him from the throne seem cause rather for
+rejoicing than grief: and whose rights, even by birth, were not
+acknowledged by the general tenor of the Saxon laws, which did not
+recognize as heir to the crown the son of a father who had not himself
+been crowned [214];--forebodings of coming evil and danger,
+originating in Edward's perturbed visions; revivals of obscure and
+till then forgotten prophecies, ancient as the days of Merlin;
+rumours, industriously fomented into certainty by Haco, whose whole
+soul seemed devoted to Harold's cause, of the intended claim of the
+Norman Count to the throne;--all concurred to make the election of a
+man matured in camp and council, doubly necessary to the safety of the
+realm.
+
+Warm favourers, naturally, of Harold, were the genuine Saxon
+population, and a large part of the Anglo-Danish--all the thegns in
+his vast earldom of Wessex, reaching to the southern and western
+coasts, from Sandwich and the mouth of the Thames to the Land's End in
+Cornwall; and including the free men of Kent, whose inhabitants even
+from the days of Caesar had been considered in advance of the rest of
+the British population, and from the days of Hengist had exercised an
+influence that nothing save the warlike might of the Anglo-Danes
+counterbalanced.  With Harold, too, were many of the thegns from his
+earlier earldom of East Anglia, comprising the county of Essex, great
+part of Hertfordshire, and so reaching into Cambridge, Huntingdon,
+Norfolk, and Ely.  With him, were all the wealth, intelligence, and
+power of London, and most of the trading towns; with him all the
+veterans of the armies he had led; with him too, generally throughout
+the empire, was the force, less distinctly demarked, of public and
+national feeling.
+
+Even the priests, save those immediately about the court, forgot, in
+the exigency of the time, their ancient and deep-rooted dislike to
+Godwin's House; they remembered, at least, that Harold had never, in
+foray or feud, plundered a single convent; or in peace, and through
+plot, appropriated to himself a single hide of Church land; and that
+was more than could have been said of any other earl of the age--even
+of Leofric the Holy.  They caught, as a Church must do, when so
+intimately, even in its illiterate errors, allied with the people as
+the old Saxon Church was, the popular enthusiasm.  Abbot combined with
+thegn in zeal for Earl Harold.
+
+The only party that stood aloof was the one that espoused the claims
+of the young sons of Algar.  But this party was indeed most
+formidable; it united all.  the old friends of the virtuous Leofric,
+of the famous Siward; it had a numerous party even in East Anglia (in
+which earldom Algar had succeeded Harold); it comprised nearly all the
+thegns in Mercia (the heart of the country) and the population of
+Northumbria; and it involved in its wide range the terrible Welch on
+the one hand, and the Scottish domain of the sub-king Malcolm, himself
+a Cumbrian, on the other, despite Malcolm's personal predilections for
+Tostig, to whom he was strongly attached.  But then the chiefs of this
+party, while at present they stood aloof, were all, with the exception
+perhaps of the young earls themselves, disposed, on the slightest
+encouragement, to blend their suffrage with the friends of Harold; and
+his praise was as loud on their lips as on those of the Saxons from
+Kent, or the burghers from London.  All factions, in short, were
+willing, in this momentous crisis, to lay aside old dissensions; it
+depended upon the conciliation of the Northumbrians, upon a fusion
+between the friends of Harold and the supporters of the young sons of
+Algar, to form such a concurrence of interests as must inevitably bear
+Harold to the throne of the empire.
+
+Meanwhile, the Earl himself wisely and patriotically deemed it right
+to remain neuter in the approaching decision between Tostig and the
+young earls.  He could not be so unjust and so mad as to urge to the
+utmost (and risk in the urging) his party influence on the side of
+oppression and injustice, solely for the sake of his brother; nor, on
+the other, was it decorous or natural to take part himself against
+Tostig; nor could he, as a statesman, contemplate without anxiety and
+alarm the transfer of so large a portion of the realm to the vice-
+kingship of the sons of his old foe--rivals to his power, at the very
+time when, even for the sake of England alone, that power should be
+the most solid and compact.
+
+But the final greatness of a fortunate man is rarely made by any
+violent effort of his own.  He has sown the seeds in the time
+foregone, and the ripe time brings up the harvest.  His fate seems
+taken out of his own control: greatness seems thrust upon him.  He has
+made himself, as it were, a want to the nation, a thing necessary to
+it; he has identified himself with his age, and in the wreath or the
+crown on his brow, the age itself seems to put forth its flower.
+
+Tostig, lodging apart from Harold in a fort near the gate of Oxford,
+took slight pains to conciliate foes or make friends; trusting rather
+to his representations to Edward, (who was wroth with the rebellious
+House of Algar,) of the danger of compromising the royal dignity by
+concessions to armed insurgents.
+
+It was but three days before that for which the Witan was summoned;
+most of its members had already assembled in the city; and Harold,
+from the window of the monastery in which he lodged, was gazing
+thoughtfully into the streets below, where, with the gay dresses of
+the thegns and cnehts, blended the grave robes of ecclesiastic and
+youthful scholar;--for to that illustrious university (pillaged the
+persecuted by the sons of Canute), Edward had, to his honour, restored
+the schools,--when Haco entered, and announced to him that a numerous
+body of thegns and prelates, headed by Alred, Archbishop of York,
+craved an audience.
+
+"Knowest thou the cause, Haco?"
+
+The youth's cheek was yet more pale than usual, as he answered slowly:
+
+"Hilda's prophecies are ripening into truths."
+
+The Earl started, and his old ambition reviving, flushed on his brow,
+and sparkled from his eye--he checked the joyous emotion, and bade
+Haco briefly admit the visitors.
+
+They came in, two by two,--a body so numerous that they filled the
+ample chamber; and Harold, as he greeted each, beheld the most
+powerful lords of the land--the highest dignitaries of the Church--
+and, oft and frequent, came old foe by the side or trusty friend.
+They all paused at the foot of the narrow dais on which Harold stood,
+and Alred repelled by a gesture his invitation to the foremost to
+mount the platform.
+
+Then Alred began an harangue, simple and earnest.  He described
+briefly the condition of the country; touched with grief and with
+feeling on the health of the King, and the failure of Cerdic's line.
+He stated honestly his own strong wish, if possible, to have
+concentrated the popular suffrages on the young Atheling; and under
+the emergence of the case, to have waived the objection to his
+immature years.  But as distinctly and emphatically he stated, that
+that hope and intent he had now formally abandoned, and that there was
+but one sentiment on the subject with all the chiefs and dignitaries
+of the realm.
+
+"Wherefore," continued he, "after anxious consultations with each
+other, those whom you see around have come to you: yea, to you, Earl
+Harold, we offer our hands and hearts to do our best to prepare for
+you the throne on the demise of Edward, and to seat you thereon as
+firmly as ever sate King of England and son of Cerdic;--knowing that
+in you, and in you alone, we find the man who reigns already in the
+English heart; to whose strong arm we can trust the defence of our
+land; to whose just thoughts, our laws.--As I speak, so think we all!"
+
+With downcast eyes, Harold heard; and but by a slight heaving of his
+breast under his crimson robe, could his emotion be seen.  But as soon
+as the approving murmur that succeeded the prelate's speech, had
+closed, he lifted his head, and answered:
+
+"Holy father, and you, Right Worthy my fellow-thegns, if ye could read
+my heart at this moment, believe that you would not find there the
+vain joy of aspiring man, when the greatest of earthly prizes is
+placed within his reach.  There, you would see, with deep and wordless
+gratitude for your trust and your love, grave and solemn solicitude,
+earnest desire to divest my decision of all mean thought of self, and
+judge only whether indeed, as king or as subject, I can best guard the
+weal of England.  Pardon me, then, if I answer you not as ambition
+alone would answer; neither deem me insensible to the glorious lot of
+presiding, under heaven, and by the light of our laws, over the
+destinies of the English realm,--if I pause to weigh well the
+responsibilities incurred, and the obstacles to be surmounted.  There
+is that on my mind that I would fain unbosom, not of a nature to
+discuss in an assembly so numerous, but which I would rather submit to
+a chosen few whom you yourselves may select to hear me, in whose cool
+wisdom, apart from personal love to me, ye may best confide;--your
+most veteran thegns, your most honoured prelates: To them will I
+speak, to them make clean my bosom; and to their answer, their
+counsels, will I in all things defer: whether with loyal heart to
+serve another, whom, hearing me, they may decide to choose; or to fit
+my soul to bear, not unworthily, the weight of a kingly crown."
+
+Alred lifted his mild eyes to Harold, and there were both pity and
+approval in his gaze, for he divined the Earl.
+
+"Thou hast chosen the right course, my son; and we will retire at
+once, and elect those with whom thou mayest freely confer, and by
+whose judgment thou mayest righteously abide."
+
+The prelate turned, and with him went the conclave.  Left alone with
+Haco, the last said, abruptly:
+
+"Thou wilt not be so indiscreet, O Harold, as to confess thy compelled
+oath to the fraudful Norman?"
+
+"That is my design," replied Harold, coldly.
+
+The son of Sweyn began to remonstrate, but the Earl cut him short.
+
+"If the Norman say that he has been deceived in Harold, never so shall
+say the men of England.  Leave me.  I know not why, Haco, but in thy
+presence, at times, there is a glamour as strong as in the spells of
+Hilda.  Go, dear boy; the fault is not in thee, but in the
+superstitious infirmities of a man who hath once lowered, or, it may
+be, too highly strained, his reason to the things of a haggard fancy.
+Go! and send to me my brother Gurth.  I would have him alone of my
+House present at this solemn crisis of its fate."
+
+Haco bowed his head, and went.
+
+In a few moments more, Gurth came in.  To this pure and spotless
+spirit Harold had already related the events of his unhappy visit to
+the Norman; and he felt, as the young chief pressed his hand, and
+looked on him with his clear and loving eyes, as if Honour made
+palpable stood by his side.
+
+Six of the ecclesiastics, most eminent for Church learning,--small as
+was that which they could boast, compared with the scholars of
+Normandy and the Papal States, but at least more intelligent and more
+free from mere formal monasticism than most of their Saxon
+contemporaries,--and six of the chiefs most renowned for experience in
+war or council, selected under the sagacious promptings of Alred,
+accompanied that prelate to the presence of the Earl.
+
+"Close, thou! close! close! Gurth," whispered Harold "for this is a
+confession against man's pride, and sorely doth it shame;--so that I
+would have thy bold sinless heart beating near to mine."
+
+Then, leaning his arm upon his brother's shoulder, and in a voice, the
+first tones of which, as betraying earnest emotion, irresistibly
+chained and affected his noble audience, Harold began his tale.
+
+Various were the emotions, though all more akin to terror than
+repugnance, with which the listeners heard the Earl's plain and candid
+recital.
+
+Among the lay-chiefs the impression made by the compelled oath was
+comparatively slight: for it was the worst vice of the Saxon laws, to
+entangle all charges, from the smallest to the greatest, in a reckless
+multiplicity of oaths [215], to the grievous loosening of the bonds of
+truth: and oaths then had become almost as much mere matter of legal
+form, as certain oaths--bad relic of those times!--still existing in
+our parliamentary and collegiate proceedings, are deemed by men, not
+otherwise dishonourable, even now.  And to no kind of oath was more
+latitude given than to such as related to fealty to a chief: for
+these, in the constant rebellions which happened year after year, were
+openly violated, and without reproach.  Not a sub-king in Wales who
+harried the border, not an earl who raised banner against the Basileus
+of Britain, but infringed his oath to be good man and true to the lord
+paramount; and even William the Norman himself never found his oath of
+fealty stand in the way, whenever he deemed it right and expedient to
+take arms against his suzerain of France.
+
+On the churchmen the impression was stronger and more serious: not
+that made by the oath itself, but by the relics on which the hand had
+been laid.  They looked at each other, doubtful and appalled, when the
+Earl ceased his tale; while only among the laymen circled a murmur of
+mingled wrath at William's bold design on their native land, and of
+scorn at the thought that an oath, surprised and compelled, should be
+made the instrument of treason to a whole people.
+
+"Thus," said Harold, after a pause, "thus have I made clear to you my
+conscience, and revealed to you the only obstacle between your offers
+and my choice.  From the keeping of an oath so extorted, and so deadly
+to England, this venerable prelate and mine own soul have freed me.
+Whether as king or as subject, I shall alike revere the living and
+their long posterity more than the dead men's bones, and, with sword
+and with battle-axe, hew out against the invader my best atonement for
+the lip's weakness and the heart's desertion.  But whether, knowing
+what hath passed, ye may not deem it safer for the land to elect
+another king,--this it is which, free and fore-thoughtful of every
+chance, ye should now decide."
+
+With these words he stepped from the dais, and retired into the
+oratory that adjoined the chamber, followed by Gurth.  The eyes of the
+priests then turned to Alred, and to them the prelate spoke as he had
+done before to Harold;--he distinguished between the oath and its
+fulfilment--between the lesser sin and the greater--the one which the
+Church could absolve--the one which no Church had the right to exact,
+and which, if fulfilled, no penance could expiate.  He owned frankly,
+nevertheless, that it was the difficulties so created, that had made
+him incline to the Atheling;--but, convinced of that prince's
+incapacity, even in the most ordinary times, to rule England, he
+shrank yet more from such a choice, when the swords of the Norman were
+already sharpening for contest. Finally he said, "If a man as fit to
+defend us as Harold can be found, let us prefer him: if not----"
+
+"There is no other man!" cried the thegns with one voice.  "And," said
+a wise old chief, "had Harold sought to play a trick to secure the
+throne, he could not have devised one more sure than the tale he hath
+now told us.  What! just when we are most assured that the doughtiest
+and deadliest foe that our land can brave, waits but for Edward's
+death to enforce on us a stranger's yoke--what! shall we for that very
+reason deprive ourselves of the only man able to resist him?  Harold
+hath taken an oath!  God wot, who among us have not taken some oath at
+law for which they have deemed it meet afterwards to do a penance, or
+endow a convent?  The wisest means to strengthen Harold against that
+oath, is to show the moral impossibility of fulfilling it, by placing
+him on the throne.  The best proof we can give to this insolent Norman
+that England is not for prince to leave, or subject to barter, is to
+choose solemnly in our Witan the very chief whom his frauds prove to
+us that he fears the most. Why, William would laugh in his own sleeve
+to summon a king to descend from his throne to do him the homage which
+that king, in the different capacity of subject, had (we will grant,
+even willingly) promised to render."
+
+This speech spoke all the thoughts of the laymen, and, with Alred's
+previous remarks, reassured all the ecclesiastics.  They were easily
+induced to believe that the usual Church penances, and ample Church
+gifts, would suffice for the insult offered to the relics: and,--if
+they in so grave a case outstripped, in absolution, an authority amply
+sufficing for all ordinary matters,--Harold, as king, might easily
+gain from the Pope himself that full pardon and shrift, which as mere
+earl, against the Prince of the Normans, he would fail of obtaining.
+
+These or similar reflections soon terminated the suspense of the
+select council; and Alred sought the Earl in the oratory, to summon
+him back to the conclave.  The two brothers were kneeling side by side
+before the little altar; and there was something inexpressibly
+touching in their humble attitudes, their clasped supplicating hands,
+in that moment when the crown of England rested above their House.
+
+The brothers rose, and at Alred's sign followed the prelate into the
+council-room.  Alred briefly communicated the result of the
+conference; and with an aspect, and in a tone, free alike from triumph
+and indecision, Harold replied:
+
+"As ye will, so will I.  Place me only where I can most serve the
+common cause.  Remain you now, knowing my secret, a chosen and
+standing council: too great is my personal stake in this matter to
+allow my mind to be unbiassed; judge ye, then, and decide for me in
+all things: your minds should be calmer and wiser than mine; in all
+things I will abide by your counsel; and thus I accept the trust of a
+nation's freedom."
+
+Each thegn then put his hand into Harold's, and called himself
+Harold's man.
+
+"Now, more than ever," said the wise old thegn who had before spoken,
+"will it be needful to heal all dissension in the kingdom--to
+reconcile with us Mercia and Northumbria, and make the kingdom one
+against the foe.  You, as Tostig's brother, have done well to abstain
+from active interference; you do well to leave it to us to negotiate
+the necessary alliance between all brave and good men."
+
+"And to that end, as imperative for the public weal, you consent,"
+said Alred, thoughtfully, "to abide by our advice, whatever it be?"
+
+"Whatever it be, so that it serve England," answered the Earl.
+
+A smile, somewhat sad, flitted over the prelate's pale lips, and
+Harold was once more alone with Gurth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The soul of all council and cabal on behalf of Harold, which has led
+to the determination of the principal chiefs, and which now succeeded
+it--was Haco.
+
+His rank as son of Sweyn, the first-born of Godwin's house--a rank
+which might have authorised some pretensions on his own part, gave him
+all field for the exercise of an intellect singularly keen and
+profound.  Accustomed to an atmosphere of practical state-craft in the
+Norman court, with faculties sharpened from boyhood by vigilance and
+meditation, he exercised an extraordinary influence over the simple
+understandings of the homely clergy and the uncultured thegns.
+Impressed with the conviction of his early doom, he felt no interest
+in the objects of others; but equally believing that whatever of
+bright, and brave, and glorious, in his brief, condemned career, was
+to be reflected on him from the light of Harold's destiny, the sole
+desire of a nature, which, under other auspices, would have been
+intensely daring and ambitious, was to administer to Harold's
+greatness.  No prejudice, no principle, stood in the way of this
+dreary enthusiasm.  As a father, himself on the brink of the grave,
+schemes for the worldly grandeur of the son, in which he confounds and
+melts his own life, so this sombre and predestined man, dead to earth
+and to joy and the emotions of the heart, looked beyond his own tomb,
+to that existence in which he transferred and carried on his ambition.
+
+If the leading agencies of Harold's memorable career might be, as it
+were, symbolised and allegorised, by the living beings with which it
+was connected--as Edith was the representative of stainless Truth--as
+Gurth was the type of dauntless Duty--as Hilda embodied aspiring
+Imagination--so Haco seemed the personation of Worldly Wisdom.  And
+cold in that worldly wisdom Haco laboured on, now conferring with
+Alred and the partisans of Harold; now closeted with Edwin and Morcar;
+now gliding from the chamber of the sick King.--That wisdom foresaw
+all obstacles, smoothed all difficulties; ever calm, never resting;
+marshalling and harmonising the things to be, like the ruthless hand
+of a tranquil fate.  But there was one with whom Haco was more often
+than with all others--one whom the presence of Harold had allured to
+that anxious scene of intrigue, and whose heart leapt high at the
+hopes whispered from the smileless lips of Haco.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It was the second day after that which assured him the allegiance of
+the thegns, that a message was brought to Harold from the Lady Aldyth.
+She was in Oxford, at a convent, with her young daughter by the Welch
+King; she prayed him to visit her.  The Earl, whose active mind,
+abstaining from the intrigues around him, was delivered up to the
+thoughts, restless and feverish, which haunt the repose of all active
+minds, was not unwilling to escape awhile from himself.  He went to
+Aldyth.  The royal widow had laid by the signs of mourning; she was
+dressed with the usual stately and loose-robed splendour of Saxon
+matrons, and all the proud beauty of her youth was restored to her
+cheek.  At her feet was that daughter who afterwards married the
+Fleance so familiar to us in Shakespeare, and became the ancestral
+mother of those Scottish kings who had passed, in pale shadows, across
+the eyes of Macbeth [216]; by the side of that child, Harold to his
+surprise saw the ever ominous face of Haco.
+
+But proud as was Aldyth, all pride seemed humbled into woman's sweeter
+emotions at the sight of the Earl, and she was at first unable to
+command words to answer his greeting.
+
+Gradually, however, she warmed into cordial confidence.  She touched
+lightly on her past sorrows; she permitted it to be seen that her lot
+with the fierce Gryffyth had been one not more of public calamity than
+of domestic grief, and that in the natural awe and horror which the
+murder of her lord had caused, she felt rather for the ill-starred
+king than the beloved spouse.  She then passed to the differences
+still existing between her house and Harold's, and spoke well and
+wisely of the desire of the young Earls to conciliate his grace and
+favour.
+
+While thus speaking, Morcar and Edwin, as if accidentally, entered,
+and their salutations of Harold were such as became their relative
+positions; reserved, not distant--respectful, not servile.  With the
+delicacy of high natures, they avoided touching on the cause before
+the Witan (fixed for the morrow), on which depended their earldoms or
+their exile.
+
+Harold was pleased by their bearing, and attracted towards them by the
+memory of the affectionate words that had passed between him and
+Leofric, their illustrious grandsire, over his father's corpse.  He
+thought then of his own prayer: "Let there be peace between thine and
+mine!" and looking at their fair and stately youth, and noble
+carriage, he could not but feel that the men of Northumbria and of
+Mercia had chosen well.  The discourse, however, was naturally brief,
+since thus made general; the visit soon ceased, and the brothers
+attended Harold to the door with the courtesy of the times.  Then Haco
+said, with that faint movement of the lips which was his only approach
+to a smile:
+
+"Will ye not, noble thegns, give your hands to my kinsman?"
+
+"Surely," said Edwin, the handsomer and more gentle of the two, and
+who, having a poet's nature, felt a poet's enthusiasm for the gallant
+deeds even of a rival,--"surely, if the Earl will accept the hands of
+those who trust never to be compelled to draw sword against England's
+hero."
+
+Harold stretched forth his hand in reply, and that cordial and
+immemorial pledge of our national friendships was interchanged.
+
+Gaining the street, Harold said to his nephew:
+
+"Standing as I do towards the young Earls, that appeal of thine had
+been better omitted."
+
+"Nay," answered Haco; "their cause is already prejudged in their
+favour.  And thou must ally thyself with the heirs of Leofric, and the
+successors of Siward."
+
+Harold made no answer.  There was something in the positive tone of
+this beardless youth that displeased him; but he remembered that Haco
+was the son of Sweyn, Godwin's first-born, and that, but for Sweyn's
+crimes, Haco might have held the place in England he held himself, and
+looked to the same august destinies beyond.
+
+In the evening a messenger from the Roman house arrived, with two
+letters for Harold; one from Hilda, that contained but these words:
+"Again peril menaces thee, but in the shape of good.  Beware! and,
+above all, of the evil that wears the form of wisdom."
+
+The other letter was from Edith; it was long for the letters of that
+age, and every sentence spoke a heart wrapped in his.
+
+Reading the last, Hilda's warnings were forgotten.  The picture of
+Edith--the prospect of a power that might at last effect their union,
+and reward her long devotion--rose before him, to the exclusion of
+wilder fancies and loftier hopes; and his sleep that night was full of
+youthful and happy dreams.
+
+The next day the Witan met.  The meeting was less stormy than had been
+expected; for the minds of most men were made up, and so far as Tostig
+was interested, the facts were too evident and notorious, the
+witnesses too numerous, to leave any option to the judges.  Edward, on
+whom alone Tostig had relied, had already, with his ordinary
+vacillation, been swayed towards a right decision, partly by the
+counsels of Alred and his other prelates, and especially by the
+representations of Haco, whose grave bearing and profound
+dissimulation had gained a singular influence over the formal and
+melancholy King.
+
+By some previous compact or understanding between the opposing
+parties, there was no attempt, however, to push matters against the
+offending Tostig to vindictive extremes.  There was no suggestion of
+outlawry, or punishment, beyond the simple deprivation of the earldom
+he had abused.  And in return for this moderation on the one side, the
+other agreed to support and ratify the new election of the
+Northumbrians.  Morcar was thus formally invested with the vice-
+kingship of that great realm; while Edwin was confirmed in the earldom
+of the principal part of Mercia.
+
+On the announcement of these decrees, which were received with loud
+applause by all the crowd assembled to hear them, Tostig, rallying
+round him his house-carles, left the town.  He went first to Githa,
+with whom his wife had sought refuge, and, after a long conference
+with his mother, he, and his haughty Countess, journeyed to the sea-
+coast, and took ship for Flanders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Gurth and Harold were seated in close commune in the Earl's chamber,
+at an hour long after the complin (or second vespers), when Alred
+entered unexpectedly.  The old man's face was unusually grave, and
+Harold's penetrating eye saw that he was gloomy with some matters of
+great moment.
+
+"Harold," said the prelate, seating himself, "the hour has come to
+test thy truth, when thou saidst that thou wert ready to make all
+sacrifice to thy land, and further, that thou wouldst abide by the
+counsel of those free from thy passions, and looking on thee only as
+the instrument of England's weal."
+
+"Speak on, father," said Harold, turning somewhat pale at the
+solemnity of the address; "I am ready, if the council so desire, to
+remain a subject, and aid in the choice of a worthier king."
+
+"Thou divinest me ill," answered Alred; "I do not call on thee to lay
+aside the crown, but to crucify the heart.  The decree of the Witan
+assigns Mercia and Northumbria to the sons of Algar.  The old
+demarcations of the heptarchy, as thou knowest, are scarce worn out;
+it is even now less one monarchy, than various states retaining their
+own laws, and inhabitated by different races, who under the sub-kings,
+called earls, acknowledge a supreme head in the Basileus of Britain.
+Mercia hath its March law and its prince; Northumbria its Dane law and
+its leader.  To elect a king without civil war, these realms, for so
+they are, must unite with and sanction the Witans elsewhere held.
+Only thus can the kingdom be firm against foes without and anarchy
+within; and the more so, from the alliance between the new earls of
+those great provinces and the House of Gryffyth, which still lives in
+Caradoc his son.  What if at Edward's death Mercia and Northumbria
+refuse to sanction thy accession?  What if, when all our force were
+needed against the Norman, the Welch broke loose from their hills, and
+the Scots from their moors!  Malcolm of Cumbria, now King of Scotland,
+is Tostig's dearest friend, while his people side with Morcar.  Verily
+these are dangers enow for a new king, even if William's sword slept
+in its sheath."
+
+"Thou speakest the words of wisdom," said Harold, "but I knew
+beforehand that he who wears a crown must abjure repose."
+
+"Not so; there is one way, and but one, to reconcile all England to
+thy dominion--to win to thee not the cold neutrality but the eager
+zeal of Mercia and Northumbria; to make the first guard thee from the
+Welch, the last be thy rampart against the Scot.  In a word, thou must
+ally thyself with the blood of these young earls; thou must wed with
+Aldyth their sister."
+
+The Earl sprang to his feet aghast.
+
+"No--no!" he exclaimed; "not that!--any sacrifice but that!--rather
+forfeit the throne than resign the heart that leans on mine!  Thou
+knowest my pledge to Edith, my cousin; pledge hallowed by the faith of
+long years.  No--no, have mercy--human mercy; I can wed no other!--any
+sacrifice but that!"
+
+The good prelate, though not unprepared for this burst, was much moved
+by its genuine anguish; but, steadfast to his purpose, he resumed:
+
+"Alas, my son, so say we all in the hour of trial--any sacrifice but
+that which duty and Heaven ordain.  Resign the throne thou canst not,
+or thou leavest the land without a ruler, distracted by rival claims
+and ambitions, an easy prey to the Norman.  Resign thy human
+affections thou canst and must; and the more, O Harold, that even if
+duty compelled not this new alliance, the old tie is one of sin,
+which, as king, and as high example in high place to all men, thy
+conscience within, and the Church without, summon thee to break.  How
+purify the erring lives of the churchman, if thyself a rebel to the
+Church? and if thou hast thought that thy power as king might prevail
+on the Roman Pontiff to grant dispensation for wedlock within the
+degrees, and that so thou mightest legally confirm thy now illegal
+troth; bethink thee well, thou hast a more dread and urgent boon now
+to ask--in absolution from thine oath to William.  Both prayers,
+surely, our Roman father will not grant.  Wilt thou choose that which
+absolves from sin, or that which consults but thy carnal affections?"
+
+Harold covered his face with his hands, and groaned aloud in his
+strong agony.
+
+"Aid me, Gurth," cried Alred, "thou, sinless and spotless; thou, in
+whose voice a brother's love can blend with a Christian's zeal; aid
+me, Gurth, to melt the stubborn, but to comfort the human, heart."
+
+Then Gurth, with a strong effort over himself, knelt by Harold's side,
+and in strong simple language, backed the representations of the
+priest.  In truth, all argument drawn from reason, whether in the
+state of the land, or the new duties to which Harold was committed,
+were on the one side, and unanswerable; on the other, was but that
+mighty resistance which love opposes ever to reason.  And Harold
+continued to murmur, while his hands concealed his face.
+
+"Impossible!--she who trusted, who trusts--who so loves--she whose
+whole youth hath been consumed in patient faith in me!--Resign her!
+and for another!  I cannot--I cannot.  Take from me the throne!--Oh
+vain heart of man, that so long desired its own curse!--Crown the
+Atheling; my manhood shall defend his youth.--But not this offering!
+No, no--I will not!"
+
+It were tedious to relate the rest of that prolonged and agitatated
+conference.  All that night, till the last stars waned, and the bells
+of prime were heard from church and convent, did the priest and the
+brother alternately plead and remonstrate, chide and soothe; and still
+Harold's heart clung to Edith's, with its bleeding roots.  At length
+they, perhaps not unwisely, left him to himself; and as, whispering
+low their hopes and their fears of the result of the self-conflict,
+they went forth from the convent, Haco joined them in the courtyard,
+and while his cold mournful eye scanned the faces of priest and
+brother, he asked them "how they had sped?"
+
+Alred shook his head and answered:
+
+"Man's heart is more strong in the flesh than true to the spirit."
+
+"Pardon me, father," said Haco, "if I suggest that your most eloquent
+and persuasive ally in this, were Edith herself.  Start not so
+incredulously; it is because she loves the Earl more than her own
+life, that--once show her that the Earl's safety, greatness, honour,
+duty, lie in release from his troth to her--that nought save his
+erring love resists your counsels and his country's claims--and
+Edith's voice will have more power than yours."
+
+The virtuous prelate, more acquainted with man's selfishness than
+woman's devotion, only replied by an impatient gesture.  But Gurth,
+lately wedded to a woman worthy of him, said gravely:
+
+"Haco speaks well, my father; and methinks it is due to both that
+Edith should not, unconsulted, be abandoned by him for whom she has
+abjured all others; to whom she has been as devoted in heart as if
+sworn wife already.  Leave we awhile my brother, never the slave of
+passion, and with whom England must at last prevail over all selfish
+thought; and ride we at once to tell to Edith what we have told to
+him; or rather--woman can best in such a case speak to woman--let us
+tell all to our Lady--Edward's wife, Harold's sister, and Edith's holy
+godmother--and abide by her counsel.  On the third day we shall
+return."
+
+"Go we so charged, noble Gurth," said Haco, observing the prelate's
+reluctant countenance, "and leave we our reverend father to watch over
+the Earl's sharp struggle."
+
+"Thou speakest well, my son," said the prelate, "and thy mission suits
+the young and the layman, better than the old and the priest."
+
+"Let us go, Haco," said Gurth, briefly.  "Deep, sore, and lasting, is
+the wound I inflict on the brother of my love; and my own heart bleeds
+in his; but he himself hath taught me to hold England as a Roman held
+Rome."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+It is the nature of that happiness which we derive from our affections
+to be calm; its immense influence upon our outward life is not known
+till it is troubled or withdrawn.  By placing his heart at peace, man
+leaves vent to his energies and passions, and permits their current to
+flow towards the aims and objects which interest labour or arouse
+ambition.  Thus absorbed in the occupation without, he is lulled into
+a certain forgetfulness of the value of that internal repose which
+gives health and vigour to the faculties he employs abroad.  But once
+mar this scarce felt, almost invisible harmony, and the discord
+extends to the remotest chords of our active being.  Say to the
+busiest man whom thou seest in mart, camp, or senate, who seems to
+thee all intent upon his worldly schemes, "Thy home is reft from thee
+--thy household gods are shattered--that sweet noiseless content in the
+regular mechanism of the springs, which set the large wheels of thy
+soul into movement, is thine nevermore!"--and straightway all exertion
+seems robbed of its object--all aim of its alluring charm.  "Othello's
+occupation is gone!"  With a start, that man will awaken from the
+sunlit visions of noontide ambition, and exclaim in his desolation
+anguish, "What are all the rewards to my labour now thou hast robbed
+me of repose?  How little are all the gains wrung from strife, in a
+world of rivals and foes, compared to the smile whose sweetness I knew
+not till it was lost; and the sense of security from mortal ill which
+I took from the trust and sympathy of love?"
+
+Thus was it with Harold in that bitter and terrible crisis of his
+fate.  This rare and spiritual love, which had existed on hope which
+had never known fruition, had become the subtlest, the most exquisite
+part of his being; this love, to the full and holy possession of
+which, every step in his career seemed to advance him, was it now to
+be evermore reft from his heart, his existence, at the very moment
+when he had deemed himself most secure of its rewards--when he most
+needed its consolations?  Hitherto, in that love he had lived in the
+future--he had silenced the voice of the turbulent human passion by
+the whisper of the patient angel, "A little while yet, and thy bride
+sits beside thy throne!"  Now what was that future! how joyless! how
+desolate!  The splendour vanished from Ambition--the glow from the
+face of Fame--the sense of Duty remained alone to counteract the
+pleadings of Affection; but Duty, no longer dressed in all the
+gorgeous colourings it took before from glory and power--Duty stern,
+and harsh, and terrible, as the iron frown of a Grecian Destiny.
+
+And thus, front to front with that Duty, he sate alone one evening,
+while his lips murmured, "Oh fatal voyage, oh lying truth in the hell-
+born prophecy! this, then, this was the wife my league with the Norman
+was to win to my arms!"  In the streets below were heard the tramp of
+busy feet hurrying homeward, and the confused uproar of joyous wassail
+from the various resorts of entertainment crowded by careless
+revellers.  And the tread of steps mounted the stairs without his
+door, and there paused;--and there was the murmur of two voices
+without; one the clear voice of Gurth,--one softer and more troubled.
+The Earl lifted his head from his bosom, and his heart beat quick at
+the faint and scarce heard sound of that last voice.  The door opened
+gently, gently: a form entered, and halted on the shadow of the
+threshold; the door closed again by a hand from without.  The Earl
+rose to his feet, tremulously, and the next moment Edith was at his
+knees; her hood thrown back, her face upturned to his, bright with
+unfaded beauty, serene with the grandeur of self-martyrdom.
+
+"O Harold!" she exclaimed, "dost thou remember that in the old time I
+said, 'Edith had loved thee less, if thou hadst not loved England more
+than Edith?'  Recall, recall those words.  And deemest thou now that
+I, who have gazed for years into thy clear soul, and learned there to
+sun my woman's heart in the light of all glories native to noblest
+man, deemest thou, O Harold, that I am weaker now than then, when I
+scarce knew what England and glory were?"
+
+"Edith, Edith, what wouldst thou say?--What knowest thou?--Who hath
+told thee?--What led thee hither, to take part against thyself?"
+
+"It matters not who told me; I know all.  What led me?  Mine own soul,
+and mine own love!"  Springing to her feet and clasping his hand in
+both hers, while she looked into his face, she resumed: "I do not say
+to thee, 'Grieve not to part;' for I know too well thy faith, thy
+tenderness--thy heart, so grand and so soft.  But I do say, 'Soar
+above thy grief, and be more than man for the sake of men!'  Yes,
+Harold, for this last time I behold thee.  I clasp thy hand, I lean on
+thy heart, I hear its beating, and I shall go hence without a tear."
+
+"It cannot, it shall not be!" exclaimed Harold, passionately.  "Thou
+deceivest thyself in the divine passion of the hour: thou canst not
+foresee the utterness of the desolation to which thou wouldst doom thy
+life.  We were betrothed to each other by ties strong as those of the
+Church,--over the grave of the dead, under the vault of heaven, in the
+form of ancestral faith!  The bond cannot be broken.  If England
+demands me, let England take me with the ties it were unholy, even for
+her sake, to rend!"
+
+"Alas, alas!" faltered Edith, while the flush on her cheek sank into
+mournful paleness.  "It is not as thou sayest. So has thy love
+sheltered me from the world--so utter was my youth's ignorance or my
+heart's oblivion of the stern laws of man, that when it pleased thee
+that we should love each other, I could not believe that that love was
+sin; and that it was sin hitherto I will not think;--now it hath
+become one."
+
+"No, no!" cried Harold; all the eloquence on which thousands had hung,
+thrilled and spell-bound, deserting him in that hour of need, and
+leaving to him only broken exclamations,--fragments, in each of which
+has his heart itself seemed shivered; "no, no,--not sin!--sin only to
+forsake thee.--Hush! hush!--This is a dream--wait till we wake!  True
+heart! noble soul!--I will not part from thee!"
+
+"But I from thee!  And rather than thou shouldst be lost for my sake--
+the sake of woman--to honour and conscience, and all for which thy
+sublime life sprang from the hands of Nature--if not the cloister, may
+I find the grave!--Harold, to the last let me be worthy of thee; and
+feel, at least, that if not thy wife--that bright, that blessed fate
+not mine!--still, remembering Edith, just men may say, 'She would not
+have dishonoured the hearth of Harold!'"
+
+"Dost thou know," said the Earl, striving to speak calmly, "dost thou
+know that it is not only to resign thee that they demand--that it is
+to resign thee, and for another?"
+
+"I know it," said Edith; and two burning tears, despite her strong and
+preternatural self-exaltation, swelled from the dark fringe, and
+rolled slowly down the colourless cheek, as she added, with proud
+voice, "I know it: but that other is not Aldyth, it is England!  In
+her, in Aldyth, behold the dear cause of thy native land; with her
+enweave the love which thy native land should command.  So thinking,
+thou art reconciled, and I consoled.  It is not for woman that thou
+desertest Edith."
+
+"Hear, and take from those lips the strength and the valour that
+belong to the name of Hero!" said a deep and clear voice behind; and
+Gurth,--who, whether distrusting the result of an interview so
+prolonged, or tenderly desirous to terminate its pain, had entered
+unobserved,--approached, and wound his arm caressingly round his
+brother.  "Oh, Harold!" he said, "dear to me as the drops in my heart
+is my young bride, newly wed; but if for one tithe of the claims that
+now call thee to the torture and trial--yea, if but for one hour of
+good service to freedom and law--I would consent without a groan to
+behold her no more.  And if men asked me how I could so conquer man's
+affections, I would point to thee, and say, 'So Harold taught my youth
+by his lessons, and my manhood by his life.'  Before thee, visible,
+stand Happiness and Love, but with them, Shame; before thee,
+invisible, stands Woe, but with Woe are England and eternal Glory!
+Choose between them."
+
+"He hath chosen," said Edith, as Harold turned to the wall, and leaned
+against it, hiding his face; then, approaching softly, she knelt,
+lifted to her lips the hem of his robe, and kissed it with devout
+passion.
+
+Harold turned suddenly, and opened his arms.  Edith resisted not that
+mute appeal; she rose, and fell on his breast, sobbing.
+
+Wild and speechless was that last embrace.  The moon, which had
+witnessed their union by the heathen grave, now rose above the tower
+of the Christian church, and looked wan and cold upon their parting.
+
+Solemn and clear paused the orb--a cloud passed over the disk--and
+Edith was gone.  The cloud rolled away, and again the moon shone
+forth; and where had knelt the fair form and looked the last look of
+Edith, stood the motionless image, and gazed the solemn eye, of the
+dark son of Sweyn.  But Harold leant on the breast of Gurth, and saw
+not who had supplanted the soft and loving Fylgia of his life--saw
+nought in the universe but the blank of desolation!
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAROLD, BY LYTTON, BOOK 10 ***
+
+******* This file should be named 7681.txt or 7681.zip *******
+
+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
+and David Widger
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*