is consultees.

We will not record the deliberations, only their result.

After half an hour had passed--a time of dread suspense to the
prisoner--Wilfred was again summoned to the bar.

William addressed him:

"We have duly considered thy case, Wilfred of Aescendune, and fully
acquit thee of the guilt of sacrilege, while we also admit that
there were causes, which might go far to justify thy rebellion
against thy stepfather, and to mitigate the guilt of armed
resistance to thy king.

"We are not met to judge thy stepfather; he has been called to a
higher and an unerring tribunal, and there we leave him, satisfied
that the Judge of all the earth will do right.

"For thee--the guilt of rebellion and of bearing arms against thy
king for three whole years has to be expiated; but if thou art
willing to take the oath of allegiance on the spot, and bind
thyself to discharge the duties of a subject to his king, we will
consider thy case favourably, and perchance restore thee, under
certain conditions, to thy ancestral possessions. Speak, what
sayest thou--dost thou hesitate?"

Every eye was fixed on the prisoner.

He stood there, firm as a rock, and looked bravely into that face
whose frown so few could bear.

"My lord of Normandy," he said, "by birth I owe thee no allegiance,
and I cannot acknowledge that thy masterful and bloody conquest of
an unoffending people has given thee any right to demand it. I
cannot betray the cause for which my father bled and died, or ally
myself to my mother's murderers. You have acquitted me of deeper
guilt. I can now die for my country without shame."

The Conqueror heard him patiently to the end.

"Thou knowest, then, thine inevitable fate?"

"I accept it. Ye have robbed me of all which made life worth
living."

"Thou must die, then: but we spare thee torture or mutilation.
Prepare to meet the headsman within the castle yard, at the third
sun-rising after this day--

"and, my lord of Coutances, since you have taken so much interest
in this young English rebel, we charge thee with the welfare of his
soul."

And the court broke up.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE CASTLE OF OXFORD.

"It is the crime and not the scaffold makes
The headsman's death a shame."

Wilfred sat alone in an upper chamber of the donjon tower the
Conqueror had erected at Oxford, hard by the mound thrown up by
Ethelfleda, lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred. For
thither the king had caused him to