eneral outburst of feeling was that all those who
had been, openly or secretly, in alliance with Elfrida now hastened to
dissociate themselves from her. She was told that by her own rash act in
killing the king before the world she had ruined her own cause for ever.

And Dunstan was not defeated after all. He made haste to proclaim the
son, the boy of ten years, king of England, and at the same time to
denounce the mother as a murderess. Nor did she dare to resist him when
he removed the little prince from Corfe Castle and placed him with some
of his own creatures, with monks for schoolmasters and guardians, whose
first lesson to him would be detestation of his mother. This lesson too
had to be impressed on the public mind; and at once, in obedience to
this command, every preaching monk in every chapel in the land raged
against the queen, the enemy of the archbishop and of religion, the
tigress in human shape, and author of the greatest crime known in the
land since Cerdic's landing. No fortitude could stand against such a
storm of execration. It overwhelmed her. It was, she believed, a
preparation for the dreadful doom about to fall on her. This was her
great enemy's day, and he would no longer be baulked of his revenge. She
remembered that Edwin had died by the assassin's hand, and the awful
fate of his queen Elgitha, whose too beautiful face was branded with hot
irons, and who was hamstrung and left to perish in unimaginable agony.
She was like the hunted roe deer hiding in a close thicket and
listening, trembling, to the hunters shouting and blowing on their horns
and to the baying of their dogs, seeking for her in the wood.

Could she defend herself against them in her castle? She consulted her
guard as to this, with the result that most of the men secretly left
her. There was nothing for her to do but wait in dreadful suspense, and
thereafter she would spend many hours every day in a tower commanding a
wide view of the surrounding level country to watch the road with
anxious eyes. But the feared hunters came not; the sound of the cry for
vengeance grew fainter and fainter until it died into silence. It was at
length borne in on her that she was not to be punished--at all events,
not here and by man. It came as a surprise to every one, herself
included. But it had been remembered that she was Edgar's widow and the
king's mother, and that her power and influence were dead. Never again
would she lift her head in Engl