the king sternly. "We
pardon thine excitement, but do not forget the presence of thine
elders."

"Can I sit thus tamely, and hear my dead father accused of the
vilest crimes?"

"Justice shall be done his memory--justice, neither more nor less,"
said the Conqueror sternly.

"I claim, then, my privilege to meet the accuser in knightly
combat."

"The accuser is dead. Wilt thou go to purgatory to meet him? for we
trust his penitence has saved him from going farther and faring
worse. Keep silence, and do not further interrupt the course of
justice. We can pity thee, believing thee to be incapable of such
deeds thyself."

Then, turning to the court:

"Is there any other evidence, verbal or written, bearing upon this
question?"

"There is, my liege," said Bishop Geoffrey.

"What is it?"

"A letter addressed to me by the murdered prior of St. Wilfred's
Priory, who perished in the flames on the fatal night of which we
have heard so much."

"Its date?"

"The night in Ascensiontide, three years agone, in which the
prisoner left his stepfather's protection and made a vain attempt
to reach me at Oxenford, striving to bear the missive of which this
is a copy."

"And the original?"

"Fell into the possession of the late baron, his stepfather, after
Eustace, Count of Blois, had borne the lad back again by force."

"Hast thou satisfied thyself of the authenticity of the copy?"

"I have; it was attested by Prior Elphege himself, in the presence
of the Benedictine from whom I received it."

"Then read the letter."

And amidst breathless attention, Geoffrey read:

Elphege, prior of the house of St. Wilfred at Aescendune, to the
noble prelate Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, now resident at
Oxenford, sendeth greeting.

It will not have escaped thy remembrance, most holy father in God,
that on the fatal field of Senlac--fatal, that is, to my
countrymen, for I am not ashamed to call myself an Englishman--thou
didst favourably notice a youth, who sought and found his father's
dead body, by name Wilfred, son of Edmund of Aescendune.

Nor wilt thou forget that thou didst intercede for the boy that he
might retain his ancestral possessions, which boon thou didst only
obtain at the cost of his widowed mother's marriage with Hugo, Lord
of Malville, outre mer.

It was then settled that the two boys, Etienne de Melville and
Wilfred of Aescendune, thereby thrown together, should each inherit
the lands and honours of thei