"I started from my sleep. The sun was still high--the air lulled and
windless. Then through the shafts and down the hill there glided in
that clear waking daylight, a grisly shape like that which I have
heard our maidens say the witch-hags, sometimes seen in the forest,
assume; yet in truth, it seemed neither of man nor woman. It turned
its face once towards me, and on that hideous face were the glee and
hate of a triumphant fiend. Oh, Harold, what should all this
portend?"

"Hast thou not asked thy kinswoman, the diviner of dreams?"

"I asked Hilda, and she, like thee, only murmured, 'The Saxon crown!'
But if there be faith in those airy children of the night, surely, O
adored one, the vision forebodes danger, not to life, but to soul; and
the words I heard seemed to say that thy wings were thy valour, and
the Fylgia thou hadst lost was,--no, that were impossible--"

"That my Fylgia was TRUTH, which losing, I were indeed lost to thee.
Thou dost well," said Harold, loftily, "to hold that among the lies of
the fancy. All else may, perchance, desert me, but never mine own
free soul. Self-reliant hath Hilda called me in mine earlier days,
and wherever fate casts me,--in my truth, and my love, and my
dauntless heart, I dare both man and the fiend."

Edith gazed a moment in devout admiration on the mien of her hero-
lover, then she drew closer and closer to his breast, consoled and
believing.