Pardon, that I knew not then how eternal are the bonds ye of the Church have woven round those of whom, if ye fail of saints, ye may at least make martyrs!" He paused, and his lip curled, and his eye shot wild fire; for in that moment his mother's blood was high within him, and he looked and thought, perhaps, as some heathen Dane, but the flash of the firmer man was momentary, and humbly smiting his breast, he murmured,--"Avaunt, Satan!--yea, deadly was my sin! And the sin was mine alone; Algive, if stained, was blameless; she escaped--and--and died!" "The King was wroth; and first to strive against my pardon was Harold my brother, who now alone in my penitence stands by my side: he strove manfully and openly; I blamed him not: but Beorn, my cousin, desired my earldom; and he strove against me, wilily and in secret,--to my face kind, behind my back despiteful.

I detected his falsehood, and meant to detain, but not to slay him.

He lay bound in my ship; he reviled and he taunted me in the hour of my gloom; and when the blood of the sea-kings flowed in fire through my veins.

And I lifted my axe in ire; and my men lifted theirs, and so,--and so!--Again I say--Deadly was my sin! Think not that I seek now to make less my guilt, as I sought when I deemed that life was yet long, and power was yet sweet.

Since then I have known worldly evil, and worldly good,--the storm and the shine of life; I have swept the seas, a sea-king; I have battled with the Dane in his native land; I have almost grasped in my right hand, as I grasped in my dreams, the crown of my kinsman, Canute;--again, I have been a fugitive and an exile;--again, I have been inlawed, and Earl of all the lands from Isis to the Wye [91].