The brothers had shrunk from the side of the accused, outlawed even amongst his kin--all save Harold, who, strong in his blameless name and beloved repute, advanced three strides, amidst the silence, and, standing by his brother's side, lifted his commanding brow above the seated judges, but he did not speak.
Then said Sweyn the Earl, strengthened by such solitary companionship in that hostile assemblage,--"I might answer that for these charges in the past, for deeds alleged as done eight long years ago, I have the King's grace, and the inlaw's right; and that in the Witans over which I as earl presided, no man was twice judged for the same offence.

That I hold to be the law, in the great councils as the small." "It is! it is!" exclaimed Godwin: his paternal feelings conquering his prudence and his decorous dignity.

"Hold to it, my son!" "I hold to it not," resumed the young earl, casting a haughty glance over the somewhat blank and disappointed faces of his foes, "for my law is here"-- and he smote his heart--"and that condemns me not once alone, but evermore! Alred, O holy father, at whose knees I once confessed my every sin,--I blame thee not that thou first, in the Witan, liftest thy voice against me, though thou knowest that I loved Algive from youth upward; she, with her heart yet mine, was given in the last year of Hardicanute, when might was right, to the Church.

I met her again, flushed with my victories over the Walloon kings, with power in my hand and passion in my veins.

Deadly was my sin!--But what asked I?
that vows compelled should be annulled; that the love of my youth might yet be the wife of my manhood.