nd pointed
towards the living man ensnared; there, the skull grinned scoff under the
holy mitre;--and suddenly rushed back, luminous and searing upon Harold's
memory, the dream long forgotten, or but dimly remembered in the
healthful business of life--the gibe and the wirble of the dead men's
bones.

"At that sight," say the Norman chronicles, "the Earl shuddered and
trembled."

"Awful, indeed, thine oath, and natural thine emotion," said the Duke;
"for in that cyst are all those relics which religion deems the holiest
in our land. The dead have heard thine oath, and the saints even now
record it in the halls of heaven! Cover again the holy bones!"

BOOK X.
THE SACRIFICE ON THE ALTAR.

CHAPTER I.

The good Bishop Alred, now raised to the See of York, had been summoned
from his cathedral seat by Edward, who had indeed undergone a severe
illness, during the absence of Harold; and that illness had been both
preceded and followed by mystical presentiments of the evil days that
were to fall on England after his death. He had therefore sent for the
best and the holiest prelate in his realm, to advise and counsel with.

The bishop had returned to his lodging in London (which was in a
Benedictine Abbey, not far from the Aldgate) late one evening, from
visiting the King at his rural palace of Havering; and he was seated
alone in his cell, musing over an interview with Edward, which had
evidently much disturbed him, when the door was abruptly thrown open, and
pushing aside in haste the monk, who was about formally to announce him,
a man so travel-stained in garb, and of a mien so disordered, rushed in,
that Alred gazed at first as on a stranger, and not till the intruder
spoke did he recognise Harold the Earl. Even then, so wild was the
Earl's eye, so dark his brow, and so livid his cheek, that it rather
seemed the ghost of the man than the man himself. Closing the door on
the monk, the Earl stood a moment on the threshold, with a breast heaving
with emotions which he sought in vain to master; and, as if resigning the
effort, he sprang forward, clasped the prelate's knees, bowed his head on
his lap, and sobbed aloud. The good bishop, who had known all the sons
of Godwin from their infancy, and to whom Harold was as dear as his own
child, folding his hands over the Earl's head, soothingly murmured a
benediction.

"No, no," cried the Earl, starting to his feet, and tossing the
dishevelled hair from his e