Blessed Sacrament
of the Body and Blood of Christ to the happy penitent; it was the first
Communion which he had willingly made since he first left home, a bright
happy boy of fifteen; and words would fail to describe the deep faith
and loving penitence with which he gathered his dying strength to
receive the Holy Mysteries.

And then Dunstan administered the last of all earthly rites--the holy
anointing;[xxxiii] while amidst their tears the mourners
yet thought of Him Who vouchsafed to be anointed before He sanctified
the grave to be a bed of hope to His people.

"Art thou happy now, my son?" said Dunstan, when all was over.

"Happy indeed! happy! yes, so happy!"

They were almost the last words he said, until an hour had passed and
the sun had set, leaving the bright clouds suffused in rich purple, when
he sat up in the bed.

"Mother! Alfred!" he said, "do you hear that music? Many are singing;
surely that was father's voice. Oh! how bright!"

He fell back, and Dunstan began the solemn commendatory prayer, for he
saw the last moment was come.

"Go forth, O Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the
Father Who hath created thee, of God the Son Who hath redeemed thee, of
God the Holy Ghost Who hath been poured out upon thee; and may thy abode
be this day in peace, in the heavenly Sion, through Jesus Christ thy Lord."

It was over! Over that brief but eventful life! Over all the bright
hopes which had centred on him in this world; but the battle was won,
and the eternal victory gained.

We have little more to add to our tale; the remainder is matter of
history. The real fate of the unhappy Elgiva is not known, for the
legend which represents her as suffering a violent death at the hands of
the partisans of Edgar or Odo rests upon no solid foundation, but is
repugnant to actual facts of history. Let us hope that she found the
only real consolation in that religion she had hitherto, unhappily,
despised, but which may perhaps have come to her aid in adversity.

The unhappy Edwy sank from bad to worse. When Elgiva was gone he seemed
to have nothing to live for; he yielded himself up to riotous living to
drown care, while his government became worse and worse. Alas, he never
repented, so far as we can learn, and the following year he died at
Gloucester--some said of a broken heart, others of a broken
constitution--in the twentieth year only of his age.

Poor unhappy Edwy the Fair! Yet he had been hi