CHAPTER III.


While, full of themselves, Harold and Edith wandered, hand in hand,
through the neighbouring glades--while into that breast which had
forestalled, at least, in this pure and sublime union, the wife's
privilege to soothe and console, the troubled man poured out the tale
of the sole trial from which he had passed with defeat and shame,--
Haco drew near to Thyra, and sate down by her side. Each was
strangely attracted towards the other; there was something congenial
in the gloom which they shared in common; though in the girl the
sadness was soft and resigned, in the youth it was stern and solemn.
They conversed in whispers, and their talk was strange for companions
so young; for, whether suggested by Edith's song, or the neighbourhood
of the Saxon grave-stone, which gleamed on their eyes, grey and wan
through the crommell, the theme they selected was of death. As if
fascinated, as children often are, by the terrors of the Dark King,
they dwelt on those images with which the northern fancy has
associated the eternal rest, on--the shroud and the worm, and the
mouldering bones--on the gibbering ghost, and the sorcerer's spell
that could call the spectre from the grave. They talked of the pain
of the parting soul, parting while earth was yet fair, youth fresh,
and joy not yet ripened from the blossom--of the wistful lingering
look which glazing eyes would give to the latest sunlight it should
behold on earth; and then he pictured the shivering and naked soul,
forced from the reluctant clay, wandering through cheerless space to
the intermediate tortures, which the Church taught that none were so