g spoiled had he been less genuine and manly than he
was. He and Alfgar were inseparable; they seemed to revive again the
traditional love of Nisus and Euryalus, or Orestes and Pylades.

The famine, which had made Wessex too poor even to serve as a bait for
the Danes, had also afflicted Mercia, but not nearly so severely, and
the generosity of the family of Aescendune had been exerted to the
utmost on behalf of the sufferers.

But the spring of the year 1006 bade fair to atone for the past. It
was bright and balmy. May was just such a month as the poets love to
sing, and June, rich in its promise of fruit, had passed when the
events we are about to relate occurred. At this time there was some
hope amongst the people that God had at length heard the petition
breathed so often in the penitential wail of the Litany--"From the
cruelty of our pagan enemies, good Lord, deliver us"--and they forgot
that the massacre on St. Brice's night yet cried for vengeance.

It was a fine summer's evening towards the end of the month of July,
and the sun was slowly setting behind the wood-crowned range of hills
in the west, where the forest terminated the pastures of Aescendune;
the cattle were returning to their stalls; the last load of hay was
being transferred from the wain to the rick, and all things spoke of
the calm and rest of a sweet night, fragrant with the breath of
honeysuckle and wild brier, when nature herself seems to court
luxurious repose.

The priory bell was tolling for compline, and thither many of the
people, released from their labour, were wending their way. The Thane
and his children, accompanied by Alfgar, paused on their homeward
road, and when the drowsy tinkling ceased, deep silence seemed to fall
over the landscape, while the night darkened--if darkness it could be
called when the moonbeams succeeded to the fiercer light of the
glowing orb of day.

The Lady Hilda was at the window of her bower, slightly indisposed;
she had not gone down to the priory, but sat inhaling the rich
fragrance of the night as the gentle breeze wafted it from a thousand
flowers. Star after star peeped out; one sweet-voiced nightingale
began her song, trilling through the air; another enviously took up
the strain. Hilda thought the earth had never seemed so much like
heaven, and she imagined the tuneful birds sang their vesper song in
union with the monks, whose solemn and plaintive chant awoke the
echoes of the priory church. Her