of the Dead," said Hilda, with a tremulous voice; "though seldom,
uncompelled by the seid and the rune, does the spectre itself warn the
eyes of the living."

"What shape, or what shadow of shape, does that spectre assume?"

"It rises in the midst of the flame, pale as the mist on the mountain,
and vast as the giants of old; with the saex, and the spear, and the
shield, of the sons of Woden.--Thou hast seen the Scin-laeca,"
continued Hilda, looking full on the face of the Earl.

"If thou deceivest me not," began Harold, doubting still.

"Deceive thee! not to save the crown of the Saxon dare I mock the
might of the dead. Knowest thou not--or hath thy vain lore stood in
place of the lore of thy fathers--that where a hero of old is buried,
his treasures lie in his grave; that over that grave is at times seen
at night the flame that thou sawest, and the dead in his image of air?
Oft seen in the days that are gone, when the dead and the living had
one faith--were one race; now never marked, but for portent, and
prophecy, and doom:--glory or woe to the eyes that see! On yon knoll,
Aesc (the first-born of Cerdic, that Father-King of the Saxons,) has
his grave where the mound rises green, and the stone gleams wan by the
altar of Thor. He smote the Britons in their temple, and he fell
smiting. They buried him in his arms, and with the treasures his
right hand had won. Fate hangs on the house of Cerdic, or the realm
of the Saxon, when Woden calls the laeca of his son from the grave."

Hilda, much troubled bent her face over her clasped hands, and,
rocking to and fro, muttered some runes unintelligible to the ear of