superstition of our men, and the despair of his own. I could win
those heights, as I have won heights as cloudcapt, but with fearful
loss of my own troops, and the massacre of every foe. Both I would
spare, if I may."

"Yet thou hast not shown such value for life, in the solitudes I
passed," said the knight bluntly.

Harold turned pale, but said firmly, "Sire de Graville, a stern thing
is duty, and resistless is its voice. These Welchmen, unless curbed
to their mountains, eat into the strength of England, as the tide
gnaws into a shore. Merciless were they in their ravages on our
borders, and ghastly and torturing their fell revenge. But it is one
thing to grapple with a foe fierce and strong, and another to smite
when his power is gone, fang and talon. And when I see before me the
faded king of a great race, and the last band of doomed heroes, too
few and too feeble to make head against my arms,--when the land is
already my own, and the sword is that of the deathsman, not of the
warrior,--verily, Sir Norman, duty releases its iron tool, and man
becomes man again."

"I go," said the Norman, inclining his head low as to his own great
Duke, and turning to the door; yet there he paused, and looking at the
ring which he had placed on his finger, he said, "But one word more,
if not indiscreet--your answer may help argument, if argument be
needed. What tale lies hid in this token?"

Harold coloured and paused a moment, then answered:

"Simply this. Gryffyth's wife, the lady Aldyth, a Saxon by birth,