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For awhile the danger was pressing. Procopius had won over to his side some of the best legions of the Empire, while his connexion with the house of Constantine secured him the formidable services of the Goths. But the great generals kept their faith to Valens, and the usurper's power melted away before them. Events could scarcely have fallen out better for Eudoxius and his friends.
Nothing is said about the queen, though the presumption is that she perishes also. In the Hrólfssaga, the boys, aided by their foster-father and brother-in-law, trusty friends, set fire to the hall in which the usurper's men lie drunk after a feast; and the usurper's egress through an underground passage having been blocked, he perishes in the flames.
I would not have drawn back for all the King's captains in a company riding out against me together. I felt that these people were behaving absurdly; they should keep a brave patient face against their troubles. Tomorrow or the next day would see us in triumph, beating our enemies back to London, to the usurper's den in Whitehall.
"Let the tyrant Edward exult in the possession of our country's crown and sceptre he may find we need not them to make a king; aye, and a king to snatch the regal diadem from the proud usurper's brow the Scottish sceptre from his blood-stained hands!" "Thou talkest wildly, Nigel," answered the lad, sorrowfully, his features assuming an expression of judgment and feeling beyond his years.
But if there were false Jacobites who had mocked their banished Sovereign year after year with professions of attachment and promises of service, and yet had, at every great crisis, found some excuse for disappointing him, and who were at that moment among the chief supports of the usurper's throne, why should they be spared?
"No!" said William, fiercely, "we take no gold for a traitor's body; no, not if Githa, the usurper's mother, offered us its weight in the shining metal; unburied be the Accursed of the Church, and let the birds of prey feed their young with his carcase!"
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