lightning; and the
Morthwyrtha looked from the mound, and saw in her visions of awe the
Valkyrs in the train of the fiery star.

On the roof of his palace stood Harold the King, and with folded arms he
looked on the Rider of Night. And up the stairs of the turret came the
soft steps of Haco, and stealing near to the King, he said:

"Arm in haste, for the bodes have come breathless to tell thee that
Tostig, thy brother, with pirate and war-ship, is wasting thy shores and
slaughtering thy people!"

CHAPTER X.

Tostig, with the ships he had gained both from Norman and Norwegian,
recruited by Flemish adventurers, fled fast from the banners of Harold.
After plundering the Isle of Wight, and the Hampshire coasts, he sailed
up the Humber, where his vain heart had counted on friends yet left him
in his ancient earldom; but Harold's soul of vigour was everywhere.
Morcar, prepared by the King's bodes, encountered and chased the traitor,
and, deserted by most of his ships, with but twelve small craft Tostig
gained the shores of Scotland. There, again forestalled by the Saxon
King, he failed in succour from Malcolm, and retreating to the Orkneys,
waited the fleets of Hardrada.

And now Harold, thus at freedom for defence against a foe more formidable
and less unnatural, hastened to make secure both the sea and the coast
against William the Norman. "So great a ship force, so great a land
force, no king in the land had before." All the summer, his fleets swept
the channel; his forces "lay everywhere by the sea."

But alas! now came the time when the improvident waste of Edward began to
be felt. Provisions and pay for the armaments failed [236]. On the
defective resources at Harold's disposal, no modern historian hath
sufficiently dwelt. The last Saxon king, the chosen of the people, had
not those levies, and could impose not those burdens which made his
successors mighty in war; and men began now to think that, after all,
there was no fear of this Norman invasion. The summer was gone; the
autumn was come; was it likely that William would dare to trust himself
in an enemy's country as the winter drew near? The Saxons--unlike their
fiercer kindred of Scandinavia, had no pleasure in war;--they fought well
in front of a foe, but they loathed the tedious preparations and costly
sacrifices which prudence demanded for self-defence. They now revolted
from a strain upon their energies, of the necessity of which they were