“I know not why it is, but a chill foreboding seems to distress my spirits now, my Edmund; it must be mere weakness, but I feel as if I should never sit by thy dear side again.”

“We are in God’s hands, my dear one, and must trust all to Him.  I go forth at the call of duty, and thou couldst not bid me to stay at home that men may call me ‘niddering.’”

“Nay, nay, my lord, forgive thy wife’s weakness; but why take Wilfred too?”

“He will be in no danger; he shall tarry with old Guthlac by the stuff.  There will be many present like him, and whatever may chance to me or others, there can be no danger to them, for victory must follow our Harold.  Hadst thou seen him at the Bridge thou couldst not doubt; he is the Ironside alive again, and as great as a general as a warrior.

“And now, dearest, a faint heart is faithlessness to God; let us commit ourselves in prayer to Him, and sleep together in peace.”

The eastern sky was aglow with the coming dawn when they arose.  Soon all was bustle in the precincts, the neighing of horses, the clatter of arms; then came the hasty meal, the long lingering farewell; and the husband and father rode away with his faithful retainers; his boy, full of spirits, by his side, waving his plumed cap to mother and sister as they watched the retiring band until lost in the distance.

They retired, the Lady Winifred and her daughter Edith, to the summit of the solitary tower, which arose over the entrance gate of the hall; there, with eyes fast filling with tears, they watched the departing band as it entered into the forest, then gorgeous with all the tints of autumn, the golden tints of the ash and elm, the reddish-brown of the beech—­all combining to make a picture, exceeding even the tender hues of spring in beauty.

But all this loveliness was the beauty of decay, the prelude to the fall of the leaf; the forests were but arrayed in their richest garb for the coming death of winter.

Into these forests, prophetic in their hues of decay, glided the brilliant train of Edmund, the last English lord of Aescendune.

Farewell, noble hearts!  Happier far ye who go forth to die for your country than they who shall live to witness her captivity.

CHAPTER II.  THE BLACK AND DARK NIGHT.

It was the evening of Saturday, the 14th of October, in the year of grace 1066.

All was over; the standard—­the royal standard of Harold—­had gone down in blood, and England’s sun had set for generations on the fatal field of Senlac or Hastings.

The orb of day had gone down gloomily; had it but gone down one hour earlier, all might yet have been well; it but lingered to behold the foe in possession of the hill where the last gallant Englishmen died with Harold, not one who fought around the standard surviving their king.

The wind had arisen, and was howling in fitful gusts across the ensanguined plain of the dead; dark night gathered over the gloomy slopes, conquered at such lavish waste of human life—­dark, but not silent; for in every direction arose the moans of the wounded and dying.