"Boy, go back to Wallingford; 'Brian,' not 'Wulfnoth,' is the name of thy father."
The sands of old Sexwulf's life were running fast. The last rites of the Church were administered to him by the parish priest of Aston Upthorpe on the day following Osric's arrival. He made no further attempt to enter into the subject of the last interview with his grandson. From time to time he pressed the youth's hands, as if to show that he trusted him now, and that all the past was forgiven; from time to time he looked upon him with eyes in which revived affection beamed. He never seemed able to rest unless Osric was in the room.
Wearied out, Osric threw himself down upon his couch that night for brief repose, but in the still hours of early dawn Judith awoke him.
"Get up—he is passing away."
Osric threw on a garment and entered the chamber. His grandfather was almost gone; he collected his dying strength for a last blessing, murmured with dying lips, upon his beloved boy. Then while they knelt and said the commendatory prayer, he passed away to rejoin those whom he had loved and lost—the wife of his youth, the children of his early manhood—passing from scenes of violence and wrong to the land of peace and love, where all the mysteries of earth are solved.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] "The last trace of a dungeon answering the above description, with huge iron rings fixed in the walls, disappeared about sixty or seventy years ago."—History of Wallingford (Hedges).
[25] It was a remark of this kind which turned Robert Bruce when fighting against his own people. "See," said an Englishman, as he saw Bruce eating with unwashed and reddened hands, "that Scotchman eating his own blood!"