to the eyes that see! On yon knoll, Aesc (the
first-born of Cerdic, that Father-King of the Saxons,) has his grave
where the mound rises green, and the stone gleams wan by the altar of
Thor. He smote the Britons in their temple, and he fell smiting. They
buried him in his arms, and with the treasures his right hand had won.
Fate hangs on the house of Cerdic, or the realm of the Saxon, when Woden
calls the laeca of his son from the grave."

Hilda, much troubled bent her face over her clasped hands, and, rocking
to and fro, muttered some runes unintelligible to the ear of her
listener. Then she turned to him, commandingly, and said:

"Thy dreams now, indeed, are oracles, more true than living Vala could
charm with the wand and the rune: Unfold them."

Thus adjured, Harold resumed:

"Methought, then, that I was on a broad, level plain, in the noon of day;
all was clear to my eye, and glad to my heart. I was alone and went on
my way rejoicing. Suddenly the earth opened under my feet, and I fell
deep, fathom-deep;--deep, as if to that central pit, which our heathen
sires called Niffelheim--the Home of Vapour--the hell of the dead who die
without glory. Stunned by the fall, I lay long, locked as in a dream in
the midst of a dream. When I opened my eyes, behold, I was girt round
with dead men's bones; and the bones moved round me, undulating, as the
dry leaves that wirble round in the winds of the winter. And from midst
of them peered a trunkless skull, and on the skull was a mitre, and from
the yawning jaws a voice came hissing, as a serpent's hiss, 'Harold, the
scorner, thou art ours!' Then, as from the buzz of an army, came voices
multitudinous, 'Thou art ours!' I sought to rise, and behold my limbs
were bound, and the gyves were fine and frail, as the web of the
gossamer, and they weighed on me like chains of iron. And I felt an
anguish of soul that no words can speak--an anguish both of horror and
shame; and my manhood seemed to ooze from me, and I was weak as a child
new born. Then suddenly there rushed forth a freezing wind, as from an
air of ice, and the bones from their whirl stood still, and the buzz
ceased, and the mitred skull grinned on me still and voiceless; and
serpents darted their arrowy tongues from the eyeless sockets. And, lo,
before me stood (O Hilda, I see it now!) the form of the spectre that had
risen from yonder knoll. With his spear, and saex, and his shield, he
stood before me; and