m away ere he had gained the middle of his discourse,
so did his own relation condemn himself, so clear became his own
tyrannous misdeeds, that the Englishmen murmured aloud their disgust, and
their impatience would not suffer him to close.

"Enough," cried Vebba, the blunt thegn from Saxon Kent; "it is plain that
neither King nor Witan can replace thee in thine earldom. Tell us not
farther of these atrocities; or by're Lady, if the Northumbrians had
chased thee not, we would."

"Take treasure and ship, and go to Baldwin in Flanders," said Thorold, a
great Anglo-Dane from Lincolnshire, "for even Harold's name can scarce
save thee from outlawry."

Tostig glared round on the assembly, and met but one common expression in
the face of all.

"These are thy henchmen, Harold!" he said through his gnashing teeth,
without vouchsafing farther word, strode from the council-hall.

That evening he left the town and hurried to tell to Edward the tale that
had so miscarried with the chiefs. The next day, the Northumbrian
delegates were heard; and they made the customary proposition in those
cases of civil differences, to refer all matters to the King and the
Witan; each party remaining under arms meanwhile.

This was finally acceded to. Harold repaired to Oxford, where the King
(persuaded to the journey by Alred, foreseeing what would come to pass)
had just arrived.

CHAPTER VI.

The Witan was summoned in haste. Thither came the young earls Morcar and
Edwin, but Caradoc, chafing at the thought of peace, retired into Wales
with his wild band.

Now, all the great chiefs, spiritual and temporal, assembled in Oxford
for the decree of that Witan on which depended the peace of England. The
imminence of the time made the concourse of members entitled to vote in
the assembly even larger than that which had met for the inlawry of
Godwin. There was but one thought uppermost in the minds of men, to
which the adjustment of an earldom, however mighty, was comparatively
insignificant--viz., the succession of the kingdom. That thought turned
instinctively and irresistibly to Harold.

The evident and rapid decay of the King; the utter failure of all male
heir in the House of Cerdic, save only the boy Edgar; whose character
(which throughout life remained puerile and frivolous) made the minority
which excluded him from the throne seem cause rather for rejoicing than
grief: and whose rights, even by birth, were not acknowledged b