dward. "Father, you are dying, the
leech says; you have not a day to live. Waste not the precious hours."

The patient sank back upon his bed, and for a few minutes only the
sound of his breathing could be heard; the difficulty with which he
drew his breath seemed to increase each moment.

The bishop held the crucifix before his eyes.

"Gaze, my son," said he, "at the emblem of Him who died that thou
mightest live, and say, 'O my God, I put Thy most pitiful passion
between Thee and my sins!'"

"Yes, father, hearken," said Edward.

"I bethink me now that Gunhilda clung to the crucifix, and said she
was a Christian. But what of that? She was a Dane, and they did right
in dragging her from it and slaying her."

"My son, my son, you throw away your salvation!" cried the bishop.

"Father, show him the viaticum," said Emma.

"It is useless; without repentance and faith 'twould but increase--"
and the prelate paused. "Let us pray. It is all we can do."

And all present knelt round the bed, while the plaintive cry arose
from the lips of the prelate, and was echoed from all around:

"Kyrie eleeson: Christe eleeson: kyrie eleeson."

And so the litany for the dying rolled solemnly along, with its
intense burning words of supplication, its deep agony of prayer, its
loving earnestness of intercession. But upon the dying sinner's ears
it fell as an echo of the long, long past; of that day when the litany
arose before his coronation at Kingston, and the prophetic curse of
Dunstan.

"Listen!" he said. "I hear the voice of Dunstan.

"Oh, why didst thou lay thy curse upon me? Did I murder my brother
Edward? Nay, 'twas my cruel mother, who murdered her own husband that
she might become queen. Her sins are visited upon me. Nay, recall thy
curse. Alas! it is uttered in thunders before the eternal judgment
seat.

"See, they come to drag me thither; they all come--Edward; the victims
whom I slew sixteen years agone in Cumbria; the slain on St. Brice's
day; Elfhelm of Shrewsbury and his sons, with their empty sockets, and
their eyes hanging down; Sigeferth, Morcar, and a thousand others.
See, Dunstan bids them all await me at the judgment seat. I will not
come; nay, they drag me.

"Edric, wilt thou not answer for me now? Accursed be thy name,
accursed!"

His frightful maledictions overpowered the supplications around his
bed; but they died away in silence--silence so long continued, that
suspicion soon became certainty.