Every eye was fixed on the prisoner.

He stood there, firm as a rock, and looked bravely into that face whose frown so few could bear.

“My lord of Normandy,” he said, “by birth I owe thee no allegiance, and I cannot acknowledge that thy masterful and bloody conquest of an unoffending people has given thee any right to demand it.  I cannot betray the cause for which my father bled and died, or ally myself to my mother’s murderers.  You have acquitted me of deeper guilt.  I can now die for my country without shame.”

The Conqueror heard him patiently to the end.

“Thou knowest, then, thine inevitable fate?”

“I accept it.  Ye have robbed me of all which made life worth living.”

“Thou must die, then:  but we spare thee torture or mutilation.  Prepare to meet the headsman within the castle yard, at the third sun-rising after this day—­

“and, my lord of Coutances, since you have taken so much interest in this young English rebel, we charge thee with the welfare of his soul.”

And the court broke up.

CHAPTER XXIV.  THE CASTLE OF OXFORD.

“It is the crime and not the scaffold makes The headsman’s death a shame.”

Wilfred sat alone in an upper chamber of the donjon tower the Conqueror had erected at Oxford, hard by the mound thrown up by Ethelfleda, lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred.  For thither the king had caused him to be removed, unwilling to stain the holy precincts of Abingdon with a deed of blood, and confiding fully in Robert d’Oyly, the governor of his new castle.

The passage up the river had occupied two full hours, under the care of trusty and able rowers; for the stream was swift in those days, before locks checked its course, as we have stated elsewhere.

Under the woods of Newenham, past the old Anglo-Saxon churches of Sandford and Iffley, up the right-hand channel of the stream just below the city, and so to the landing place beneath the old tower {xxv}.

William had given orders to treat our Wilfred with all possible consideration, and to allow him every indulgence, which did not militate against his safe keeping, for he admired, even while he felt it necessary to slay.  So he was not thrust into a dungeon, but confined in an upper chamber, where a grated window, at a great height, afforded him a fair view of that world he was about to leave for ever.

“Ah! if I were but in those woods,” sighed the prisoner to himself, “I would give these Normans some trouble to catch me again; but the poor bird can only beat himself against the cruel bars of his cage.”

He counted the hours.  It was the evening of his condemnation; two whole days, followed by a feverish night, and then when that next sun arose—­

Strange thoughts began to arise—­what sort of axe would they use?—­who would be there?—­would they bind his eyes?—­would he have to kneel on the stones?—­what kind of block would they use?