“Could you not return with me to court,” he said, “and relieve the tedium of old Dunstan’s society?  You cannot think what pleasures London affords; it is life there indeed—­it is true there are no forests like these, but then, in the winter, when the country is so dreary, the town is the place.”

“My father will never consent to my leaving home,” returned Elfric, who inwardly felt his heart was with the prince.

“We might overcome that.  I am to have a page.  You might be nominally my page, really my companion; and should I ever be king, you would find you had not served me in vain.”

The idea had got such strong possession of the mind of Edwy, that he ventilated it the same night at the supper table, but met with scant encouragement.  Still he did not despair; for, as he told Elfric, the influence of his royal uncle, King Edred, might be hopefully exerted on their joint behalf.

“I mean to get you to town,” he said.  “I shall persuade my old uncle, who is more a monk than a king, that you are dreadfully pious, attached to monkish Latin, and all that sort of thing, so that he will long to get you to town, if it is only to set an example to me.”

“But if he does not find that I answer his expectations?”

“Oh, it will be too late to alter then; you will be comfortably installed in the palace; and, between you and me, he is but old and feeble, and has always had a disease of some kind.  I expect he will soon die, and then who will be king save Edwy, and who in England shall be higher than his friend Elfric?”

It was a brilliant prospect, as it seemed to boys of fifteen, for such was the mature age of the speakers.

Shortly after the last conversation, an express came from the court to seek the young prince—­the messenger had been long delayed from ignorance of the present abode of Edwy, who had carefully concealed the secret until he felt he could tarry no longer, fearing the wrath not only of the king, but of Dunstan, whom he dreaded yet more than his uncle.

So he and his attendants, who had, like him, found pleasant entertainment at Aescendune, bade farewell to the home where he had been so hospitably entertained:  and so ended a visit, pregnant with the most important results, then utterly unforeseen and unintended, to the family he had honoured by his presence.

Some few weeks passed, and under the tuition of their chaplain, who was charged with their education, Elfric and Alfred had returned to their usual course of life.

It would seem somewhat a hard one to a lover of modern ease.  They rose early, as we have already seen, and before breaking their fast went with their father and most of the household to the early mass at the monastery of St. Wilfred, returned to an early meal, and then worked hard, on ordinary occasions at their Latin, and such other studies as were pursued in that primitive age of England.  The midday meal was