“I cannot express to you, my old friend and brother,” he said, “the great pain with which I sent your poor boy Elfric home, but it was a necessity.”
“Sent him home?” said Ella.
“Yes, at the time our lamented Edred died.”
“Sent him home!” repeated Ella, in such undisguised amazement that Dunstan soon perceived something was amiss, and in a few short minutes became possessed of the whole facts, while Ella learnt his son’s disgrace.
They conferred long and earnestly. The father’s heart was sorely wounded, but he could not think that Elfric would resist his commands, and he promised to take him back at once to Æscendune, where he hoped all would soon be well—“soon, very soon,” he said falteringly.
So the old thane went to his lodgings, hard by the palace, where he awaited his son.
Late in the evening Elfric arrived, his countenance flushed with wine: he had been seeking courage for the part he had to play in the wine cup.
Long and painful, most painful, was the interview that followed. Hardened in his rebellion, the unhappy Elfric defied his father’s authority and justified his sin, flatly refusing to return home, in which he pretended to be justified by “the duty a subject owed to his sovereign.”
Thus roused to energy, Ella solemnly adjured his boy to remember the story of his uncle Oswald, and the sad fate he had met with. It was very seldom indeed that Ella alluded to his unhappy brother, the story was too painful; but now that Elfric seemed to be commencing a similar course of disobedience, the example of the miserable outlaw came too forcibly to his mind to be altogether suppressed.
“Beware, my son,” added Ella, “lest the curse which fell upon Oswald fall upon you, and your younger brother succeed to your inheritance.”