It so chanced this
year, that certain Englishers, on their way from the Holy Land, fell in
with two pilgrims--and these last questioned them much of me. And one,
with face venerable and benign, drew forth a ring and said, 'When thou
reachest England, give thou this to the King's own hand, and say, by this
token, that on Twelfth-Day Eve he shall be with me. For what he gave to
me, will I prepare recompense without bound; and already the saints deck
for the new comer the halls where the worm never gnaws and the moth never
frets.' 'And who,' asked my subjects amazed, 'who shall we say, speaketh
thus to us?' And the pilgrim answered, 'He on whose breast leaned the
Son of God, and my name is John!' [205] Wherewith the apparition
vanished. This is the ring I gave to the pilgrim; on the fourteenth
night from thy parting, miraculously returned to me. Wherefore, Harold,
my time here is brief, and I rejoice that thy coming delivers me up from
the cares of state to the preparation of my soul for the joyous day."

Harold, suspecting under this incredible mission some wily device of the
Norman, who, by thus warning Edward (of whose precarious health he was
well aware), might induce his timorous conscience to take steps for the
completion of the old promise,--Harold, we say, thus suspecting, in vain
endeavoured to combat the King's presentiments, but Edward interrupted
him, with displeased firmness of look and tone:

"Come not thou, with thy human reasonings, between my soul and the
messenger divine; but rather nerve and prepare thyself for the dire
calamities that lie greeding in the days to come! Be thine, things
temporal. All the land is in rebellion. Anlaf, whom thy coming
dismissed, hath just wearied me with sad tales of bloodshed and ravage.
Go and hear him;--go hear the bodes of thy brother Tostig, who wait
without in our hall;--go, take axe, and take shield, and the men of
earth's war, and do justice and right; and on thy return thou shalt see
with what rapture sublime a Christian King can soar aloft from his
throne! Go!"

More moved, and more softened, than in the former day he had been with
Edward's sincere, if fanatical piety, Harold, turning aside to conceal
his face, said:

"Would, O royal Edward, that my heart, amidst worldly cares, were as pure
and serene as thine! But, at least, what erring mortal may do to guard
this realm, and face the evils thou foreseest in the Far--that will I do;
and perchance,