dull pool, the water-rat swimming through the rank sedges; only in the
forest, the grey wings of the owl, fluttering heavily across the
glades; only in the grass, the red eyes of the bloated toad.

Then Hilda went slowly home, and the maids worked all night at the
charmed banner. All that night, too, the watch-dogs howled in the
yard, through the ruined peristyle--howled in rage and in fear. And
under the lattice of the room in which the maids broidered the banner,
and the Prophetess muttered her charm, there couched, muttering also,
a dark, shapeless thing, at which those dogs howled in rage and in
fear.




CHAPTER II.


All within the palace of Westminster showed the confusion and dismay
of the awful time;--all, at least, save the council-chamber, in which
Harold, who had arrived the night before, conferred with his thegns.
It was evening: the courtyards and the halls were filled with armed
men, and almost with every hour came rider and bode from the Sussex
shores. In the corridors the Churchmen grouped and whispered, as they
had whispered and grouped in the day of King Edward's death. Stigand
passed among them, pale and thoughtful. The serge gowns came rustling
round the archprelate for counsel or courage.

"Shall we go forth with the King's army?" asked a young monk, bolder
than the rest, "to animate the host with prayer and hymn?"