Bertric was now about sixteen—­a handsome, attractive boy, full of life and fire, yet still possessing that devotion which Father Cuthbert had remarked in him as a boy of twelve.  As the heir to the lands of Aescendune, and the only son, he would have been in much danger of being spoiled had he been less genuine and manly than he was.  He and Alfgar were inseparable; they seemed to revive again the traditional love of Nisus and Euryalus, or Orestes and Pylades.

The famine, which had made Wessex too poor even to serve as a bait for the Danes, had also afflicted Mercia, but not nearly so severely, and the generosity of the family of Aescendune had been exerted to the utmost on behalf of the sufferers.

But the spring of the year 1006 bade fair to atone for the past.  It was bright and balmy.  May was just such a month as the poets love to sing, and June, rich in its promise of fruit, had passed when the events we are about to relate occurred.  At this time there was some hope amongst the people that God had at length heard the petition breathed so often in the penitential wail of the Litany—­“From the cruelty of our pagan enemies, good Lord, deliver us”—­and they forgot that the massacre on St. Brice’s night yet cried for vengeance.

It was a fine summer’s evening towards the end of the month of July, and the sun was slowly setting behind the wood-crowned range of hills in the west, where the forest terminated the pastures of Aescendune; the cattle were returning to their stalls; the last load of hay was being transferred from the wain to the rick, and all things spoke of the calm and rest of a sweet night, fragrant with the breath of honeysuckle and wild brier, when nature herself seems to court luxurious repose.

The priory bell was tolling for compline, and thither many of the people, released from their labour, were wending their way.  The Thane and his children, accompanied by Alfgar, paused on their homeward road, and when the drowsy tinkling ceased, deep silence seemed to fall over the landscape, while the night darkened—­if darkness it could be called when the moonbeams succeeded to the fiercer light of the glowing orb of day.

The Lady Hilda was at the window of her bower, slightly indisposed; she had not gone down to the priory, but sat inhaling the rich fragrance of the night as the gentle breeze wafted it from a thousand flowers.  Star after star peeped out; one sweet-voiced nightingale began her song, trilling through the air; another enviously took up the strain.  Hilda thought the earth had never seemed so much like heaven, and she imagined the tuneful birds sang their vesper song in union with the monks, whose solemn and plaintive chant awoke the echoes of the priory church.  Her heart was full of solemn yet not sad thoughts; peace, sweet peace, was the subject of her meditations, and she thought with gratitude of Him who had hitherto preserved Mercia from the foe, who had indeed for nearly two years ceased to molest England.