and had you seen him at the moment you would have seen the true
brother of Sweyn. He broke from his thoughts with the strong effort
of a man habituated to self-control, and advanced to the narrow
window, opened the lattice, and looked out.

The moon was in all her splendour. The long deep shadows of the
breathless forest chequered the silvery whiteness of open sward and
intervening glade. Ghostly arose on the knoll before him the grey
columns of the mystic Druid,--dark and indistinct the bloody altar of
the Warrior god. But there his eye was arrested; for whatever is
least distinct and defined in a landscape has the charm that is the
strongest; and, while he gazed, he thought that a pale phosphoric
light broke from the mound with the bautastein, that rose by the
Teuton altar. He thought, for he was not sure that it was not some
cheat of the fancy. Gazing still, in the centre of that light there
appeared to gleam forth, for one moment, a form of superhuman height.
It was the form of a man, that seemed clad in arms like those on the
wall, leaning on a spear, whose point was lost behind the shafts of
the crommell. And the face grew in that moment distinct from the
light which shimmered around it, a face large as some early god's, but
stamped with unutterable and solemn woe. He drew back a step, passed
his hand over his eyes, and looked again. Light and figure alike had
vanished; nought was seen save the grey columns and dim fane. The
Earl's lip curved in derision of his weakness. He closed the lattice,
undressed, knelt for a moment or so by the bedside, and his prayer was
brief and simple, nor accompanied with the crossings and signs
customary in his age. He rose, extinguished the lamp, and threw
himself on the bed.

The moon, thus relieved of the lamp-light, came clear and bright