The prisoner strode up and down the limited area, wrestling with self, bending the will by prayer to submit to ignominy and pain, for he knew now that his father had abandoned him, and that he had to apprehend the worst; still he did not regret the choice he had made, and he felt, as he prayed, peace and confidence descend like heavenly dew upon his soul.  Mechanically he cast his eyes around the cell, and tried to trace out the pattern of the flooring, when he saw that the central figure, around which the circles and squares converged, was justice, with the scales, and the motto, “Fiat justitia.”  He knew the meaning of the words, for Father Cuthbert had taught him some Latin, and the conviction flashed upon him that, sooner or later, all the wrong and evil about him would be righted by the power of a judge as omnipotent as unerring.  And this thought made him the more reconciled to the apparent injustice of which he was the victim, and he prayed for his father, that God would enlighten him with the true light.

“Perhaps before he dies he may yet think of me without shame.”

For the shame which he unwillingly brought upon a father who was stern, yet not unkind or void of parental love, was the bitterest ingredient in the cup.

And so the hours rolled on, which brought the dreaded morn nearer and nearer; and the victim, comforted by prayer, but without hope in this world, slept, and thought no longer of the torturer’s knife, or felt the cruel anticipations which would rack the waiting mind.

And while he slept he was wakened, yet but partly wakened, by a voice which seemed to belong to the borderland ’twixt sleep and waking.

“Alfgar, son of Anlaf, sleepest thou?”

“Surely I dream,” thought he, and strove to sleep again.

“Alfgar, son of Anlaf, sleepest thou?”

Now he sat up, and beheld, or thought he beheld, a figure of one clothed in the attire of a minstrel, in the centre of the chamber.

“Art thou yet in the flesh like me?” he cried, repressing a shudder.

“Even so, a being of like mould, subject to pain and death.”

“A prisoner, then; art doomed to die?”

“No prisoner, neither art thou, if thou willest to escape.”

“Thou art the gleeman who insulted Sweyn.”

“Nay, who told the brutal tyrant the truth.”

“And what doest thou here?”

“I am come to deliver thee.”

“But how?”

“Rise up, cast on your garments.”

Hardly knowing what he did, Alfgar obeyed, and when he stood face to face with the stranger, began to lose the uneasy impression that the being who addressed him was otherwise than mortal; for he saw by the light of the lamp that the gleeman bore all the attributes of a living man.

“How came you here?”

“Because I know the secrets of the prison house—­knew them before the Danes had murdered the once happy dwellers in this garden of England, which they have made a howling wilderness; hence I escaped the wrath of the furious parricide, whom the saints destroy, with ease, and laughed in security at their vain efforts to take me; but we must waste no time; it yet wants five hours to daybreak; within those five hours we must reach the opposite shore.”