hy bereaven flock? whom shall we
admonish to tread in those traces thy footsteps leave below?"

The King made a slight gesture of impatience; and the Queen, forgetful of
all but her womanly sorrow, raised her eye and finger in reproof that the
dying was thus disturbed. But the stake was too weighty, the suspense
too keen, for that reverent delicacy in those around; and the thegns
pressed on each other, and a murmur rose, which murmured the name of
Harold.

"Bethink thee, my son," said Alred, in a tender voice tremulous with
emotion; "the young Atheling is too much an infant yet for these anxious
times."

Edward signed his head in assent.

"Then," said the Norman bishop of London, who till that moment had stood
in the rear, almost forgotten amongst the crowd of Saxon prelates, but
who himself had been all eyes and ears. "Then," said Bishop William,
advancing, "if thine own royal line so fail, who so near to thy love, who
so worthy to succeed, as William thy cousin, the Count of the Normans?"

Dark was the scowl on the brow of every thegn, and a muttered "No, no:
never the Norman!" was heard distinctly. Harold's face flushed, and his
hand was on the hilt of his ateghar. But no other sign gave he of his
interest in the question.

The King lay for some moments silent, but evidently striving to
re-collect his thoughts. Meanwhile the two archprelates bent over
him--Stigand eagerly, Alred fondly.

Then raising himself on one arm, while with the other he pointed to
Harold at the foot of the bed, the King said:

"Your hearts, I see, are with Harold the Earl: so be it." At those words
he fell back on his pillow; a loud shriek burst from his wife's lips; all
crowded around; he lay as the dead.

At the cry, and the indescribable movement of the throng, the physician
came quick from the lower part of the hall. He made his way abruptly to
the bedside, and said chidingly, "Air, give him air." The throng parted,
the leach moistened the King's pale lips with the cordial, but no breath
seemed to come forth, no pulse seemed to beat; and while the two prelates
knelt before the human body and by the blessed rood, the rest descended
the dais, and hastened to depart. Harold only remained; but he had passed
from the foot to the head of the bed.

The crowd had gained the centre of the hall, when a sound that startled
them as if it had come from the grave, chained every footstep--the sound
of the King's voice, loud, terribly