Returned to Constantinople, the desire for his northern home seized
Hardrada. There he heard that his nephew Magnus, the illegitimate son
of St. Olave, had become King of Norway,--and he himself aspired to a
throne. So he gave up his command under Zoe the empress; but, if
Scald be believed, Zoe the empress loved the bold chief, whose heart
was set on Maria her niece. To detain Hardrada, a charge of mal-
appropriation, whether of pay or of booty, was brought against him.
He was cast into prison. But when the brave are in danger, the saints
send the fair to their help! Moved by a holy dream, a Greek lady
lowered ropes from the roof of the tower to the dungeon wherein
Hardrada was cast. He escaped from the prison, he aroused his
Vaeringers, they flocked round their chief; he went to the house of
his lady Maria, bore her off to the galley, put out into the Black
Sea, reached Novgorod, (at the friendly court of whose king he had
safely lodged his vast spoils,) sailed home to the north: and, after
such feats as became sea-king of old, received half of Norway from
Magnus, and on the death of his nephew the whole of that kingdom
passed to his sway. A king so wise and so wealthy, so bold and so
dread, had never yet been known in the north. And this was the king
to whom came Tostig the Earl, with the offer of England's crown.

It was one of the glorious nights of the north, and winter had already
begun to melt into early spring, when two men sate under a kind of
rustic porch of rough pine-logs, not very unlike those seen now in
Switzerland and the Tyrol. This porch was constructed before a
private door, to the rear of a long, low, irregular building of wood
which enclosed two or more courtyards, and covering an immense space
of ground. This private door seemed placed for the purpose of
immediate descent to the sea; for the ledge of the rock over which the