About half-an-hour after midnight Alfgar awoke with a strange impression upon his mind that some one was in the room.  It was very dark and stormy, and the wind, finding its way through crevices in the ill-built house, would account for many noises, but there was something stirring which was not the wind, and the impression was strong on his waking senses that between him and the window, which was opposite his bed, a figure had passed.

Not fully trusting impressions produced at such a moment, yet with a heavy vague sense of evil weighing him down like a nightmare, Alfgar lay and listened.

At length he heard a sound which might have been produced by falling rain percolating through the roof, drop, drop upon the floor, but it was strange, for there was no sound of rain outside at that moment.

At length a cold draught made him turn his head, and he dimly saw Edmund’s door open and disclose the window within the room, then shut slowly again.

He could control his apprehensions no longer, and rose gently from his bed, so as not to warn the foe, on the one hand, should one be present, or if, as he strove to believe, all was fancy, not to awake Edmund.  No one was in his own little room, that he felt rather than saw in a moment; but some one might be in Edmund’s, and he passed through the door, which he remembered, with a shudder, was shut firmly when Edmund said “goodnight.”  At that instant he heard a low click, as of a spring lock, but very faintly; hesitating no longer, he passed into the monarch’s room, and advanced to the bedside.

“My lord!” he gently whispered, but there was no answer; he spoke again in vain.

Just then he felt his naked feet come into contact with some wet substance, slightly glutinous, on the floor, and shuddered at the contact.  All trembling, he put his hand to the pillow, and drew it back; it was wet with the same fluid, which his reason and experience told him was blood.  He could hardly refrain from crying for help, but first sought a light.  The process of procuring light then from flint, steel, and tinder was very slow, and it was some minutes before he had a taper lighted, when its beams disclosed to his horror-stricken sight Edmund, weltering in his blood; a dagger had been driven suddenly and swiftly to his heart, and he had died apparently without a struggle.  The weapon yet remained {xviii}.

Here his affliction and grief overpowered him; he threw himself upon the body from which he had withdrawn the weapon; he kissed the now cold lips; he cried, half distracted, “O Edmund, my lord, speak!”

Alas! those lips were never to speak again while time lasted.  At length the first deep emotion passed away, and left the unhappy Alfgar comparatively master of himself, whereupon he left the chamber, and cried aloud for help.

It was his cry which the ladies heard in their distant bower.

The piercing cry, “Help!  Edmund, the king, is slain!” roused the household—­Elfwyn, Herstan, Hermann, the ladies, agitated beyond measure; the household guard; and, last of all, Edric.