said Elfrida, coming out, with her brightest smiles. 'Pray you
dismount and enter.' 'Not so, dear madam,' said the King. 'My
company will miss me, and fear that I have met with some harm.
Please you to give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in the
saddle, to you and to my little brother, and so ride away with the
good speed I have made in riding here.' Elfrida, going in to bring
the wine, whispered an armed servant, one of her attendants, who
stole out of the darkening gateway, and crept round behind the
King's horse. As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying,
'Health!' to the wicked woman who was smiling on him, and to his
innocent brother whose hand she held in hers, and who was only ten
years old, this armed man made a spring and stabbed him in the
back. He dropped the cup and spurred his horse away; but, soon
fainting with loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in his
fall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. The frightened
horse dashed on; trailing his rider's curls upon the ground;
dragging his smooth young face through ruts, and stones, and
briers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until the hunters, tracking the
animal's course by the King's blood, caught his bridle, and
released the disfigured body.

Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, ETHELRED, whom
Elfrida, when he cried out at the sight of his murdered brother
riding away from the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a torch
which she snatched from one of the attendants. The people so
disliked this boy, on account of his cruel mother and the murder
she had done to promote him, that Dunstan would not have had him
for king, but would have made EDGITHA, the daughter of the dead
King Edgar, and of the lady whom he stole out of the convent at
Wilton, Queen of England, if she would have consented. But she