King's eye, which seemed to each man to dwell on himself. Suddenly
that eye altered in its cold beam; suddenly the voice changed its
deliberate accent; the grey hairs seemed to bristle erect, the whole
face to work with horror; the arms stretched forth, the form writhed
on the couch, distorted fragments from the lips: "Sanguelac!
Sanguelac!--the Lake of Blood," shrieked forth the dying King, "the
Lord hath bent his bow--the Lord hath bared his sword. He comes down
as a warrior to war, and his wrath is in the steel and the flame. He
boweth the mountains, and comes down, and darkness is under his feet!"

As if revived but for these tremendous denunciations, while the last
word left his lips the frame collapsed, the eyes set, and the King
fell a corpse in the arms of Harold.

But one smile of the sceptic or the world-man was seen on the paling
lips of those present: that smile was not on the lips of warriors and
men of mail. It distorted the sharpened features of Stigand, the
world-man and the miser, as, passing down, and amidst the group, he
said, "Tremble ye at the dreams of a sick old man?" [218]




CHAPTER II.


The time of year customary for the National Assembly; the recent
consecration of Westminster, for which Edward had convened all his
chief spiritual lords, the anxiety felt for the infirm state of the
King, and the interest as to the impending succession--all concurred