"I am not so Saxon as to care for your ceorlish Saxon names."

"Enow," cried the proudest and greatest of the thegns, his very
moustache curling with ire. "He who can be called niddering shall
never be crowned king!"

"I don't want to be crowned king, rude man, with your laidly
moustache: I want to be made knight, and have banderol and baldric.--
Go away!"

"We go, son," said Alred, mournfully.

And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he
halted, turned back,--and the child was pointing at him in mimicry,
while Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure. The prelate
shook his head, and the group gained again the ante-hall.

"Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!" cried a
thegn. "No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!"

"No more of him, indeed!" said the prelate, mournfully. "It is but
the fault of his nurture and rearing,--a neglected childhood, a Norman
tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay," said
Harold.

"Nay," returned Alred, "no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo
what is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature. Ere the year is
out the throne will stand empty in our halls."

"Who then," said Haco, abruptly, "who then,--(pardon the ignorance of