“I accept thy trust and thy love, Haco! Ride with me, then; but pardon a dull comrade, for when the soul communes with itself the lip is silent.”
“True,” said Haco, “and I am no babbler. Three things are ever silent: Thought, Destiny, and the Grave.”
Each then, pursuing his own fancies, rode on fast, and side by side; the long shadows of declining day struggling with a sky of unusual brightness, and thrown from the dim forest trees and the distant hillocks. Alternately through shade and through light rode they on; the bulls gazing on them from holt and glade, and the boom of the bittern sounding in its peculiar mournfulness of toile as it rose from the dank pools that glistened in the western sun.
It was always by the rear of the house, where stood the ruined temple, so associated with the romance of his life, that Harold approached the home of the Vala; and as now the hillock, with its melancholy diadem of stones, came in view, Haco for the first time broke the silence.
“Again—as in a dream!” he said, abruptly. “Hill, ruin, grave-mound—but where the tall image of the mighty one?”
“Hast thou then seen this spot before?” asked the Earl.
“Yea, as an infant here was I led by my father Sweyn; here too, from thy house yonder, dim seen through the fading leaves, on the eve before I left this land for the Norman, here did I wander alone; and there, by that altar, did the great Vala of the North chaunt her runes for my future.”
“Alas! thou too!” murmured Harold; and then he asked aloud, “What said she?”
“That thy life and mine crossed each other in the skein; that I should save thee from a great peril, and share with thee a greater.”
“Ah, youth,” answered Harold, bitterly, “these vain prophecies of human wit guard the soul from no anger. They mislead us by riddles which our hot hearts interpret according to their own desires. Keep thou fast to youth’s simple wisdom, and trust only to the pure spirit and the watchful God.”