erence even more marked than that she had
bestowed upon Sweyn. The stars and the runes assured her of his future
greatness, and the qualities and talents of the young Earl had, at the
very onset of his career, confirmed the accuracy of their predictions.
Her interest in Harold became the more intense, partly because whenever
she consulted the future for the lot of her grandchild Edith, she
invariably found it associated with the fate of Harold--partly because
all her arts had failed to penetrate beyond a certain point in their
joint destinies, and left her mind agitated and perplexed between hope
and terror. As yet, however, she had wholly failed in gaining any
ascendancy over the young Earl's vigorous and healthful mind: and though,
before his exile, he came more often than any of Godwin's sons to the old
Roman house, he had smiled with proud incredulity at her vague
prophecies, and rejected all her offers of aid from invisible agencies
with the calm reply--"The brave man wants no charms to encourage him to
his duty, and the good man scorns all warnings that would deter him from
fulfilling it."

Indeed, though Hilda's magic was not of the malevolent kind, and sought
the source of its oracles not in fiends but gods, (at least the gods in
whom she believed,) it was noticeable that all over whom her influence
had prevailed had come to miserable and untimely ends;--not alone her
husband and her son-in-law, (both of whom had been as wax to her
counsel,) but such other chiefs as rank or ambition permitted to appeal
to her lore. Nevertheless, such was the ascendancy she had gained over
the popular mind, that it would have been dangerous in the highest degree
to put into execution against her the laws condemnatory of witch craft.
In her, all the more powerful Danish families reverenced, and would have
protected, the blood of their ancient kings, and the widow of one of
their most renowned heroes.

Hospitable, liberal, and beneficent to the poor; and an easy mistress
over numerous ceorls, while the vulgar dreaded, they would yet have
defended her. Proofs of her art it would have been hard to establish;
hosts of compurgators to attest her innocence would have sprung up. Even
if subjected to the ordeal, her gold could easily have bribed the priests
with whom the power of evading its dangers rested. And with that worldly
wisdom which persons of genius in their wildest chimeras rarely lack, she
had already freed herself from