ll; Love, forgetful of the presence of Death;--so has it
ever been, so ever shall it be! He hastened his stride, and bounded up
the gentle hillock, and his dogs, with a joyous bark, came round the
knees of Edith. Then Harold shook the bird from his wrist, and it fell,
with its light wing, on the altar-stone of Thor.

"Thou art late, but thou art welcome, Harold my kinsman," said Edith,
simply, as she bent her face over the hounds, whose gaunt heads she
caressed.

"Call me not kinsman," said Harold, shrinking, and with a dark cloud on
his broad brow.

"And why, Harold?"

"Oh, Edith, why?" murmured Harold; and his thought added, "she knows not,
poor child, that in that mockery of kinship the Church sets its ban on
our bridals."

He turned, and chid his dogs fiercely as they gambolled in rough glee
round their fair friend.

The hounds crouched at the feet of Edith; and Edith looked in mild wonder
at the troubled face of the Earl.

"Thine eyes rebuke me, Edith, more than my words the hounds!" said
Harold, gently. "But there is quick blood in my veins; and the mind must
be calm when it would control the humour. Calm was my mind, sweet Edith,
in the old time, when thou wert an infant on my knee, and wreathing, with
these rude hands, flower-chains for thy neck like the swan's down, I
said, 'The flowers fade, but the chain lasts when love weaves it.'"

Edith again bent her face over the crouching hounds. Harold gazed on her
with mournful fondness; and the bird still sung and the squirrel swung
himself again from bough to bough. Edith spoke first:

"My godmother, thy sister, hath sent for me, Harold, and I am to go to
the Court to-morrow. Shalt thou be there?"

"Surely," said Harold, in an anxious voice, "surely, I will be there! So
my sister hath sent for thee: wittest thou wherefore?"

Edith grew very pale, and her tone trembled as she answered:

"Well-a-day, yes."

"It is as I feared, then!" exclaimed Harold, in great agitation; "and my
sister, whom these monks have demented, leagues herself with the King
against the law of the wide welkin and the grand religion of the human
heart. Oh!" continued the Earl, kindling into an enthusiasm, rare to his
even moods, but wrung as much from his broad sense as from his strong
affection, "when I compare the Saxon of our land and day, all enervated
and decrepit by priestly superstition, with his forefathers in the first
Christian era, yielding to the religion they