to care for your ceorlish Saxon names."

"Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very moustache
curling with ire. "He who can be called niddering shall never be crowned
king!"

"I don't want to be crowned king, rude man, with your laidly moustache: I
want to be made knight, and have banderol and baldric.--Go away!"

"We go, son," said Alred, mournfully.

And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he halted,
turned back,--and the child was pointing at him in mimicry, while
Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure. The prelate shook his
head, and the group gained again the ante-hall.

"Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a thegn.
"No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!"

"No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully. "It is but the
fault of his nurture and rearing,--a neglected childhood, a Norman tutor,
German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay," said Harold.

"Nay," returned Alred, "no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo what
is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature. Ere the year is out the
throne will stand empty in our halls."

"Who then," said Haco, abruptly, "who then,--(pardon the ignorance of
youth wasted in captivity abroad!) who then, failing the Atheling, will
save this realm from the Norman Duke, who, I know well, counts on it as
the reaper on the harvest ripening to his sickle?"

"Alas, who then?" murmured Alred.

"Who then?" cried the three thegns, with one voice, "why the worthiest,
the wisest, the bravest! Stand forth, Harold the Earl, Thou art the
man!" And without awaiting his answer, they strode from the hall.

CHAPTER V.

Around Northampton lay the forces of Morcar, the choice of the Anglo-Dane
men of Northumbria. Suddenly there was a shout as to arms from the
encampment; and Morcar, the young Earl, clad in his link mail, save his
helmet, came forth, and cried:

"My men are fools to look that way for a foe; yonder lies Mercia, behind
it the hills of Wales. The troops that come hitherward are those which
Edwin my brother brings to our aid."

Morcar's words were carried into the host by his captains and warbodes,
and the shout changed from alarm into joy. As the cloud of dust through
which gleamed the spears of the coming force rolled away, and lay lagging
behind the march of the host, there rode forth from the van two riders.
Fast and far from the rest they rode, an