son, with me, and pray that a life of truth and virtue may atone the
madness of an hour."

So by the crucifix knelt the warrior and the priest.




CHAPTER II.


All other thought had given way to Harold's impetuous yearning to
throw himself upon the Church, to hear his doom from the purest and
wisest of its Saxon preachers. Had the prelate deemed his vow
irrefragable, he would have died the Roman's death, rather than live
the traitor's life; and strange indeed was the revolution created in
this man's character, that he, "so self-dependent," he who had
hitherto deemed himself his sole judge below of cause and action, now
felt the whole life of his life committed to the word of a cloistered
shaveling. All other thought had given way to that fiery impulse--
home, mother, Edith, king, power, policy, ambition! Till the weight
was from his soul, he was as an outlaw in his native land. But when
the next sun rose, and that awful burthen was lifted from his heart
and his being--when his own calm sense, returning, sanctioned the fiat
of the priest,--when, though with deep shame and rankling remorse at
the memory of the vow, he yet felt exonerated, not from the guilt of
having made, but the deadlier guilt of fulfilling it--all the objects
of existence resumed their natural interest, softened and chastened,
but still vivid in the heart restored to humanity. But from that
time, Harold's stern philosophy and stoic ethics were shaken to the