a little distance,
he covered his face with his mantle.

At this time his brother Gurth, who had chiefly shared watch with
Harold,--for Tostig, foreseeing his father's death, was busy soliciting
thegn and earl to support his own claims to the earldom about to be
vacant; and Leofwine had gone to London on the previous day to summon
Githa who was hourly expected--Gurth, I say, entered the room on tiptoe,
and seeing his brother's attitude, guessed that all was over. He passed
on to the table, took up the lamp, and looked long on his father's face.
That strange smile of the dead, common alike to innocent and guilty, had
already settled on the serene lips; and that no less strange
transformation from age to youth, when the wrinkles vanish, and the
features come out clear and sharp from the hollows of care and years, had
already begun. And the old man seemed sleeping in his prime.

So Gurth kissed the dead, as Harold had done before him, and came up and
sate himself by his brother's feet, and rested his head on Harold's knee;
nor would he speak till, appalled by the long silence of the Earl, he
drew away the mantle from his brother's face with a gentle hand, and the
large tears were rolling down Harold's cheeks.

"Be soothed, my brother," said Gurth; "our father has lived for glory,
his age was prosperous, and his years more than those which the Psalmist
allots to man. Come and look on his face, Harold, its calm will comfort
thee."

Harold obeyed the hand that led him like a child; in passing towards the
bed, his eye fell upon the cyst which Hilda had given to the old Earl,
and a chill shot through his veins.

"Gurth," said he, "is not this the morning of the sixth day in which we
have been at the King's Court?"

"It is the morning of the sixth day."

Then Harold took forth the key which Hilda had given him, and unlocked
the cyst, and there lay the white winding-sheet of the dead, and a
scroll. Harold took the scroll, and bent over it, reading by the mingled
light of the lamp and the dawn:

"All hail, Harold, heir of Godwin the great, and Githa the king-born!
Thou hast obeyed Hilda, and thou knowest now that Hilda's eyes read the
future, and her lips speak the dark words of truth. Bow thy heart to the
Vala, and mistrust the wisdom that sees only the things of the daylight.
As the valour of the warrior and the song of the scald, so is the lore of
the prophetess. It is not of the body, it is soul within soul; it