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For, quick of impulse, the Poet-Titan smiled and frowned often. Harold Hardrada stood in the light of the moon, and gazing thoughtfully on the luminous sea. Tostig marked him for some moments where he sate in the porch, and then rose and joined him. "Why should my words so disturb thee, O King of the Norseman?" "Is glory, then, a drug that soothes to sleep?" returned the Norwegian.
Greatly surprised at this frank address, Edwin and Morcar both hastened to say that for their part they had no quarrel whatever with any of the house of Godwin, save with Tostig. "Tostig will soon be beyond the sea, and will no longer be a source of trouble. There is, it seems to me, but one way by which we can unite and bind our interests into one.
"Thegns," said he suddenly, to the score of riders who grouped round him, "follow." And shaking the rein of his horse, King Harold rode straight to that part of the hostile front from which rose, above the spears, the Northumbrian banner of Tostig. Wondering, but mute, the twenty thegns followed him.
We rolled on the deck, and the great bear hounds, captured in the fight with the North Danes just past, sprang upon us. "Ho! ho!" roared Tostig Lodbrog, as the old man and I and the wolfskin were mauled and worried by the dogs. But Lingaard gained his feet, saving me but losing the wolfskin to the hounds.
With his arms folded on his breast stood Tostig; his face was beautiful as a Greek's, in all save the forehead, which was low and lowering. Sleek and trim were his bright chestnut locks; and his arms were damascened with silver, for he was one who loved the pomp and luxury of war.
"But what I fear the most," resumed the Earl, "is, not the enemy without, but the jealousy within. By the side of Harold stands Tostig, rapacious to grasp, but impotent to hold able to ruin, strengthless to save." "Nay, Godwin, my lord, thou wrongest our handsome son."
But foreseeing great evil in the surrender of his brother's interests, whether by lowering the King's dignity to the demands of armed force, or sending abroad in all his fierce passions a man so highly connected with Norman and Dane, so vindictive and so grasping, as Tostig, the Earl shunned further parley at that time and place.
But Gurth hath not the deep wit of these tangled times; and Leofwine is too light, and Tostig too fierce. So wife mine, of these our six sons, Harold alone, dauntless as Tostig, mild as Gurth, hath his father's thoughtful brain.
The Norsemen were not the soldiers to yield because their leader was slain rather the more resolute to fight, since revenge was now added to valour; yet, but for the daring and promptness with which Tostig had cut his way to the standard, the day had been already decided.
He resumed: "Thy brother Tostig, as so nearly allied to my House, would, I am advised, back my claims; and wert thou absent from England, Tostig, I conceive, would be in thy place as the head of the great party of Godwin.
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