ch was flying, sped by
Danish arrows. All the rest of the day the Tower windows looked out
upon a litter of brown heaps, here and there a white face upturned or a
scarf-end fluttering in the autumn wind.

Wild with helpless misery, the Lord of Ivarsdale would have charged the
Berserkers with his handful of armed servants if the old cniht had not
restrained him almost by force; when he spent his breath in railing at
everything between earth and sky.

"It is the folly of it that maddens me," he cried over and over, "the
needless folly! Had I but used my mind to think with, instead of to plan
feasts--I am moved to dash my brains out when I remember it!"

"Nay, it is my judgment that was lacking," Morcard said bitterly. "I was
an old dog that could not learn a new trick. I should have seen that the
old ways no longer avail. The fault was mine." His wrinkled old face was
so haggard with self-reproach that the Etheling hastily recanted.

"Now I bethink me, I am wrong, and it is no one's fault. It comes of the
curse that lies over the Island. Was there not something rotten in all
English palisades, it would never have happened that the pirates got
their first foothold. But we have shaken off the spell, and they have
not mastered us yet. To-night we will try to get a messenger out to my
kinsman in Yorkshire, and another to my father's friend in Essex."

The next day, and for many days thereafter, the Tower windows stared out
like expectant eyes. But no delivering bands ever came over the hills
to reward their watching. From the moment that he was swallowed by the
outer darkness, the messenger for Yorkshire was as lost to their sight
and their knowledge as though he had plunged into the ocean. And a week
later, the man who had been sent into Essex crept back with a dejection
that foretold his ill success. The ealdorman was taxed, might and main,
to protect his own lands. He regretted it, to his innermost vitals, but
these were days when each must stand or fall for himself. He could only
send his sympathy and the counsel to hold out unflinchingly in the hope
that some fortune of war would call the besiegers away.

When he heard that, Father Ingulph forgot his robes to indulge in
a curse. "Does he think we have possession of the widow's blessed
oil-cruse? If the larder had not been stocked for a week's feasting,
we must needs have been starved under ere this. How much longer can
we endure, even at one meal a day?" He sighed a