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Beyond the other door lay the housecarls of Offa down the long hall where we had feasted, and within his own chambers there were a score or more of the young thanes of his bodyguard sleeping across his own doors. Now we heard the still voice of Selred, and after it a stifled outcry, hushed almost before it arose, and then silence.

Who this was I did not hear, but I saw the face of the good man change, and he hurried to dismount and go to the litter. And thence, after a word or two had passed, came the priest I had seen; and when he uncowled I knew him for my friend Selred, and glad I was to see him. "Why, how goes it, father?" I said, as my hand met his.

Slowly the footfalls of our comrades died away down the low passage, and then the last flicker of their torch passed from the stone walls of that terrible pit, leaving Selred and myself alone in the cold moonlight.

"It was terrible," said Selred, shuddering: "it was as the face of the lost." And then out in the courtyard the horns blew the morning call cheerily, and the hall buzzed in a moment with the rousing of the men who slept along its walls, and there reached us the sound of jest and laughter and shouts as they waked the heavy sleepers.

Even he could not help fearing that the earthquake, coming at that moment as it did, might be sent as a token which he must hear though the dreams of his mother went for naught. "And yet," he said to Father Selred and myself as we rode beside him, "I am doing what I deem best for throne and realm, and I have no thought of guile or harm to any man.

Nor can I see that I have to fear any from Offa, or that at his court can be danger to me." "Journey and reason therefor are alike good so far as man can see or plan," said Selred the priest. "I would that every journey was undertaken as fully innocently. I cannot think that any tokens have been sent to warn you from it.

Father Selred approved, gravely. Then he muttered somewhat to himself, and laughed. It was Latin, but the king told me afterward what it meant. Some old Roman poet had made a song in which he said that a man who was just and straightforward in his purposes need not fear if the world fell, shattered in ruins, around him.

Sighard heard it also, and rose up quietly and looked into the inner chamber. "What is it?" asked Ethelbert, as he came back and sat down again. "Naught, lord. I thought I heard footsteps in your bedchamber; but there is nothing there. A strange house has strange sounds, and it takes time to get used to them." "Some one passing under the window," said Selred the chaplain, laughing.

But I minded the voice and pleading look of that mother who spoke with me in the garden at Thetford, and I had a mind to stay and see this thing to an end, for it was all that I might do. Maybe I could find the body of her son and see it brought back to her. "I bide here," I said; and Selred stepped to my side without a word. "I also," said Sighard; "I have words to say yet before I die."

Then Selred went into the inner chamber and gathered to him the little crown of the king, and one or two more things which were of value because of him who had worn them, and said that he would bestow them in the church until they might be taken back to his mother in Norfolk. I took his arms, and the sword we had found in the pit, for Sighard had brought that up from thence.