hristian, then, if thou canst not as an Englishman. The
time will not be long that I shall live to implore thee."

"Nay, dear mother, surely thou art not ailing."

"Sick unto death, Wilfred, I fear; nay, but for thee I should say,
I hope; for shall I not then rejoin thy dear father in a land where
war and violence are unknown? But for thy sake, dear son, I would
fain live."

Poor Wilfred was sobbing by her side, overcome by the blank vision
thus opening before him. What would the world be to him, left alone
amidst fierce and hateful foreigners, who had slain his father, and
would willingly slay him?

"Mother, I cannot live without you. If you die--" and he could say
no more, for it shamed his manhood to weep, as he would have said,
"like a girl."

Poor lad, we must excuse him.

"Now, my dear Wilfred, wilt thou not renew thy promise, and pray
God for help to keep it?"

"Yes, by God's help, at least while you live; but dost thou think
thou art so ill, dear mother?--it is but fancy."

"Nay, I feel I am daily, hourly, drawing nearer my end, as if the
lamp of life were burning more and more dimly. Morning after
morning I rise weaker from my bed, and mortal strength seems slowly
and surely forsaking me. But it will be but a short parting; thou
must pray that we may live for ever together. God will grant it for
His dear Son's sake."

And the mother and son knelt down to pray.

It was too true, the English lady of Aescendune was slowly
declining--passing away, drawing nearer daily to the bright land
where her lost Edmund had gone before.

It was a complaint which no one understood, although a Jewish
physician, whom her husband in his anxiety consulted, prescribed a
medicine which he said would ensure her recovery in a few weeks.
This medicine the baron--for to such rank had Hugo de Malville been
raised, on his accession to the lands of Aescendune--this medicine
he would always administer with his own hand. Sometimes Wilfred was
standing by, and noticed that, dropped in water, it diffused at
first a sapphire hue, but that upon exposure to the air, that of
the ruby succeeded.

Oh, those days of anxiety and grief--those days when the loved
patient was so manifestly loosing her hold upon life, although
sometimes there would come a tantalising change for the better, and
bring back hopes never to be realised.

The boyish reader will easily imagine what Wilfred had to bear all
this time from his Norman companions, f