e evidence of some internal struggle; the
intelligence was not yet complete; the soul and heart were not yet
united: and Edith the Christian maid dwelt in the home of Hilda the
heathen prophetess. The girl's blue eyes, rendered dark by the shade of
their long lashes, were fixed intently upon the stern and troubled
countenance which was bent upon her own, but bent with that abstract gaze
which shows that the soul is absent from the sight. So sate Hilda, and
so reclined her grandchild Edith.

"Grandam," said the girl in a low voice and after a long pause; and the
sound of her voice so startled the handmaids, that every spindle stopped
for a moment and then plied with renewed activity; "Grandam, what
troubles you--are you not thinking of the great Earl and his fair sons,
now outlawed far over the wide seas?"

As the girl spoke, Hilda started slightly, like one awakened from a
dream; and when Edith had concluded her question, she rose slowly to the
height of a statue, unbowed by her years, and far towering above even the
ordinary standard of men; and turning from the child, her eye fell upon
the row of silent maids, each at her rapid, noiseless, stealthy work.
"Ho!" said she; her cold and haughty eye gleaming as she spoke;
"yesterday they brought home the summer--to-day, ye aid to bring home the
winter. Weave well--heed well warf and woof; Skulda [10] is amongst ye,
and her pale fingers guide the web!"

The maidens lifted not their eyes, though in every cheek the colour paled
at the words of the mistress. The spindles revolved, the thread shot,
and again there was silence more freezing than before.

"Askest thou," said Hilda at length, passing to the child, as if the
question so long addressed to her ear had only just reached her mind;
"askest thou if I thought of the Earl and his fair sons?--yea, I heard
the smith welding arms on the anvil, and the hammer of the shipwright
shaping strong ribs for the horses of the sea. Ere the reaper has bound
his sheaves, Earl Godwin will scare the Normans in the halls of the
Monk-king, as the hawk scares the brood in the dovecot. Weave well, heed
well warf and woof, nimble maidens--strong be the texture, for biting is
the worm."

"What weave they, then, good grandmother?" asked the girl, with wonder
and awe in her soft mild eyes.

"The winding-sheet of the great!"

Hilda's lips closed, but her eyes, yet brighter than before, gazed upon
space, and her pale hand seemed tracin