Edith may be wife to another, if thou wilt,--barren spouse of the Church or mother of children who lisp not Harold's name as their father.' Out on these priests with their mummeries, and out on their war upon human hearts!" His fair brow grew stern and fierce as the Norman Duke's in his ire; and had you seen him at the moment you would have seen the true brother of Sweyn.

He broke from his thoughts with the strong effort of a man habituated to self-control, and advanced to the narrow window, opened the lattice, and looked out.
The moon was in all her splendour.

The long deep shadows of the breathless forest chequered the silvery whiteness of open sward and intervening glade.

Ghostly arose on the knoll before him the grey columns of the mystic Druid,--dark and indistinct the bloody altar of the Warrior god.

But there his eye was arrested; for whatever is least distinct and defined in a landscape has the charm that is the strongest; and, while he gazed, he thought that a pale phosphoric light broke from the mound with the bautastein, that rose by the Teuton altar.