thou reachest England, give thou this to the King's own hand, and say,
by this token, that on Twelfth-Day Eve he shall be with me. For what
he gave to me, will I prepare recompense without bound; and already
the saints deck for the new comer the halls where the worm never gnaws
and the moth never frets.' 'And who,' asked my subjects amazed, 'who
shall we say, speaketh thus to us?' And the pilgrim answered, 'He on
whose breast leaned the Son of God, and my name is John!' [205]
Wherewith the apparition vanished. This is the ring I gave to the
pilgrim; on the fourteenth night from thy parting, miraculously
returned to me. Wherefore, Harold, my time here is brief, and I
rejoice that thy coming delivers me up from the cares of state to the
preparation of my soul for the joyous day."

Harold, suspecting under this incredible mission some wily device of
the Norman, who, by thus warning Edward (of whose precarious health he
was well aware), might induce his timorous conscience to take steps
for the completion of the old promise,--Harold, we say, thus
suspecting, in vain endeavoured to combat the King's presentiments,
but Edward interrupted him, with displeased firmness of look and tone:

"Come not thou, with thy human reasonings, between my soul and the
messenger divine; but rather nerve and prepare thyself for the dire
calamities that lie greeding in the days to come! Be thine, things
temporal. All the land is in rebellion. Anlaf, whom thy coming
dismissed, hath just wearied me with sad tales of bloodshed and
ravage. Go and hear him;--go hear the bodes of thy brother Tostig,
who wait without in our hall;--go, take axe, and take shield, and the
men of earth's war, and do justice and right; and on thy return thou
shalt see with what rapture sublime a Christian King can soar aloft
from his throne! Go!"