“Be not saddened, Harold; hope still.”
“Hope!” repeated Hilda, rising proudly from her recumbent position, “Hope! in that knell from St. Paul’s, dull indeed is thine ear, O Harold, if thou hearest not the joy-bells that inaugurate a future king!”
The Earl started; his eyes shot fire; his breast heaved.
“Leave us, Edith,” said Hilda, in a low voice; and after watching her grandchild’s slow reluctant steps descend the knoll, she turned to Harold, and leading him towards the gravestone of the Saxon chief, said:
“Rememberest thou the spectre that rose from this mound?—rememberest thou the dream that followed it?”
“The spectre, or deceit of mine eye, I remember well,” answered the Earl; “the dream, not;—or only in confused and jarring fragments.”
“I told thee then, that I could not unriddle the dream by the light of the moment; and that the dead who slept below never appeared to men, save for some portent of doom to the house of Cerdic. The portent is fulfilled; the Heir of Cerdic is no more. To whom appeared the great Scin-laeca, but to him who shall lead a new race of kings to the Saxon throne!”
Harold breathed hard, and the colour mounted bright and glowing to his cheek and brow.
“I cannot gainsay thee, Vala. Unless, despite all conjecture, Edward should be spared to earth till the Atheling’s infant son acquires the age when bearded men will acknowledge a chief [151], I look round in England for the coming king, and all England reflects but mine own image.”
His head rose erect as he spoke, and already the brow seemed august, as if circled by the diadem of the Basileus. “And if it be so,” he added, “I accept that solemn trust, and England shall grow greater in my greatness.”