We will go on till the tokens, if tokens they be, are plain in their meaning." Father Selred approved, gravely.

Then he muttered somewhat to himself, and laughed.

It was Latin, but the king told me afterward what it meant.

Some old Roman poet had made a song in which he said that a man who was just and straightforward in his purposes need not fear if the world fell, shattered in ruins, around him.
It was a good saying, and surely that was the way of Ethelbert of East Anglia.

Maybe the one thing which did trouble him was his thought of the terror of his mother, and of her anxiety for him.
But it was a long while before the rest of us shook off the fear of what all this might betoken.