the more famous monastery of Waltham; but she had promised Hilda not
to enter on the novitiate, until the birthday of Harold had passed.
She herself had no longer faith in the omens and prophecies that had
deceived her youth and darkened her life; and, in the more congenial
air of our Holy Church, the spirit, ever so chastened, grew calm and
resigned. But the tidings of the Norman's coming, and the King's
victorious return to his capital, had reached even that still retreat;
and love, which had blent itself with religion, led her steps to that
lonely altar. And suddenly, as she there knelt, only lighted by the
moon through the high casements, she was startled by the sound of
approaching feet and murmuring voices. She rose in alarm--the door of
the church was thrown open--torches advanced--and amongst the monks,
between Osgood and Ailred, came the King. He had come, that last
night before his march, to invoke the prayers of that pious
brotherhood; and by the altar he had founded, to pray, himself, that
his one sin of faith forfeited and oath abjured, might not palsy his
arm and weigh on his soul in the hour of his country's need.

Edith stifled the cry that rose to her lips, as the torches fell on
the pale and hushed and melancholy face of Harold; and she crept away
under the arch of the vast Saxon columns, and into the shade of
abutting walls. The monks and the King, intent on their holy office,
beheld not that solitary and shrinking form. They approached the
altar; and there the King knelt down lowlily, and none heard the
prayer. But as Osgood held the sacred rood over the bended head of
the royal suppliant, the Image on the crucifix (which had been a gift
from Alred the prelate, and was supposed to have belonged of old to
Augustine, the first founder of the Saxon Church--so that, by the
superstition of the age, it was invested with miraculous virtues)
bowed itself visibly. Visibly, the pale and ghastly image of the