"Then," said Haco, halting at the threshold, "I will go across the
woodland to your house, Harold, and prepare your ceorls for your
coming."

"I shall tarry here till Hilda returns," answered Harold, and it may
be late in the night ere I reach home; but Sexwolf already hath my
orders. At sunrise we return to London, and thence we march on the
insurgents."

"All shall be ready. Farewell, noble Edith; and thou, Thyra my
cousin, one kiss more to our meeting again." The child fondly held
out her arms to him, and as she kissed his cheek whispered:

"In the grave, Haco!"

The young man drew his mantle around him, and moved away. But he did
not mount his steed, which still grazed by the road; while Harold's,
more familiar with the place, had found its way to the stall; nor did
he take his path through the glades to the house of his kinsman.
Entering the Druid temple, he stood musing by the Teuton tomb. The
night grew deeper and deeper, the stars more luminous and the air more
hushed, when a voice close at his side, said, clear and abrupt:

"What does Youth the restless, by Death the still?"

It was the peculiarity of Haco, that nothing ever seemed to startle or
surprise him. In that brooding boyhood, the solemn, quiet, and sad
experience all fore-armed, of age, had something in it terrible and
preternatural; so without lifting his eyes from the stone, he
answered: