“Fit leader of bearded men! fit king for the Saxon land!” cried a thegn. “No more of your Atheling, Alred my father!”
“No more of him, indeed!” said the prelate, mournfully. “It is but the fault of his nurture and rearing,—a neglected childhood, a Norman tutor, German hirelings. We may remould yet the pliant clay,” said Harold.
“Nay,” returned Alred, “no leisure for such hopes, no time to undo what is done by circumstance, and, I fear, by nature. Ere the year is out the throne will stand empty in our halls.”
“Who then,” said Haco, abruptly, “who then,—(pardon the ignorance of youth wasted in captivity abroad!) who then, failing the Atheling, will save this realm from the Norman Duke, who, I know well, counts on it as the reaper on the harvest ripening to his sickle?”
“Alas, who then?” murmured Alred.
“Who then?” cried the three thegns, with one voice, “why the worthiest, the wisest, the bravest! Stand forth, Harold the Earl, Thou art the man!” And without awaiting his answer, they strode from the hall.
CHAPTER V.
Around Northampton lay the forces of Morcar, the choice of the Anglo-Dane men of Northumbria. Suddenly there was a shout as to arms from the encampment; and Morcar, the young Earl, clad in his link mail, save his helmet, came forth, and cried:
“My men are fools to look that way for a foe; yonder lies Mercia, behind it the hills of Wales. The troops that come hitherward are those which Edwin my brother brings to our aid.”