had been the travail of the mother, and long between life and death
the struggle of the newborn babe. And his cradle had been rocked with
a trembling knee, and his pillow been bathed with hot tears. Frail
had been his childhood--a thing that hung on her care; and now, as the
boy grew, blooming and strong, into youth, the mother felt that she
had given life twice to her child. Therefore was he more dear to her
than the rest; and, therefore, as she gazed upon him now, fair and
smiling, and hopeful, she mourned for him more than for Sweyn, the
outcast and criminal, on his pilgrimage of woe, to the waters of
Jordan, and the tomb of our Lord. For Wolnoth, selected as the
hostage for the faith of his house, was to be sent from her arms to
the Court of William the Norman. And the youth smiled and was gay,
choosing vestment and mantle, and ateghars of gold, that he might be
flaunting and brave in the halls of knighthood and the beauty,--the
school of the proudest chivalry of the Christian world. Too young,
and too thoughtless, to share the wise hate of his elders for the
manners and forms of the foreigners, their gaiety and splendour, as
his boyhood had seen them, relieving the gloom of the cloister court,
and contrasting the spleen and the rudeness of the Saxon temperament,
had dazzled his fancy and half Normanised his mind. A proud and happy
boy was he, to go as hostage for the faith, and representative of the
rank, of his mighty kinsmen; and step into manhood in the eyes of the
dames of Rouen.

By Wolnoth's side stood his young sister, Thyra, a mere infant; and
her innocent sympathy with her brother's pleasure in gaud and toy
saddened Githa yet more.

"O my son!" said the troubled mother, "why, of all my children, have
they chosen thee? Harold is wise against danger, and Tostig is fierce