While he gazed upon them, two of their number, whose attire was rich and costly, and who seemed to be of higher rank than the rest, perhaps their officers, attracted his attention as they walked near the spot where, clinging to a tree, he overlooked the encampment from above.

One of them was a tall, dark warrior, whose whole demeanour was that of the professional soldier, whose dress was plain yet rich, and who might easily be guessed to be the commander of the party.  He was talking earnestly, but in a subdued tone, to his younger companion, whom he seemed to be labouring to convince of the propriety of some course of action.

Alfred watched them eagerly; the form of the younger—­for so he appeared by his slender frame—­seemed familiar to him, and when at last they turned their faces and walked towards him, the light of a neighbouring fire showed him the face of his brother Elfric.

“My dream!” he mentally exclaimed.

They were evidently talking about some very important subject, and it was also evident that the objections of the younger, whatever they might be, were becoming rapidly overruled, when, as chance, if it were chance, would have it, they paused in their circuit of the little camp just beneath the tree where Alfred was posted.

“You see,” said the elder, “that our course is clear, so definitely clear that we have but to do our duty to the king, while we avenge a thousand little insults we have ourselves received from this insolent monk—­such insults as warriors wash out with blood.”

“Yet he is a churchman, and it would be called utter sacrilege.”

“Sacrilege! is a churchman’s blood redder than that of layman, and is he not doomed as a traitor by a judgment as righteous as ever English law pronounced! did he not keep Edwy from his throne during the lifetime of the usurper Edred!”

“That was the sentence of the Witan, and you served Edred.”

“I did not owe the allegiance of an Englishman to either, being of foreign birth, and so was no traitor; as for the Witan, it is well known Dunstan influenced their decision at the death of the royal Edmund.”

“I never heard the assertion before.”

“You have many things still to learn; you are but young as yet.  But let it pass.  Does not his conduct to Queen Elgiva merit death!”

“I think it does.  But still not without sentence of law.”

“That sentence has been in fact pronounced, for in such cases as these, where the subject is too powerful for the direct action of the law to reach him, the decision of the king and council must pass for law, and they have decided that Dunstan must die, and have left the execution of the sentence—­to us.”

He did not add that the council in question consisted of the giddy young nobles who had surrounded Edwy from the first, aided by a few hoary sinners whose lives of plunder and rapine had given them a personal hatred of the Church.