"Take me in thine arms, Harold, and wrap thy mantle round me, for the air is cold."
The Earl lifted the child to his breast, and gazed on her cheek long and wistfully; then questioning her tenderly, he took her within the house; and Edith followed with Haco.
"Is Hilda within?" asked the son of Sweyn.
"Nay, she hath been in the forest since noon," answered Edith with an effort, for she could not recover her awe of his presence.
"Then," said Haco, halting at the threshold, "I will go across the woodland to your house, Harold, and prepare your ceorls for your coming."
"I shall tarry here till Hilda returns," answered Harold, and it may be late in the night ere I reach home; but Sexwolf already hath my orders. At sunrise we return to London, and thence we march on the insurgents."
"All shall be ready. Farewell, noble Edith; and thou, Thyra my cousin, one kiss more to our meeting again." The child fondly held out her arms to him, and as she kissed his cheek whispered:
"In the grave, Haco!"
The young man drew his mantle around him, and moved away. But he did not mount his steed, which still grazed by the road; while Harold's, more familiar with the place, had found its way to the stall; nor did he take his path through the glades to the house of his kinsman. Entering the Druid temple, he stood musing by the Teuton tomb. The night grew deeper and deeper, the stars more luminous and the air more hushed, when a voice close at his side, said, clear and abrupt:
"What does Youth the restless, by Death the still?"
It was the peculiarity of Haco, that nothing ever seemed to startle or surprise him. In that brooding boyhood, the solemn, quiet, and sad experience all fore-armed, of age, had something in it terrible and preternatural; so without lifting his eyes from the stone, he answered:
"How sayest thou, O Hilda, that the dead are still?" Hilda placed her hand on his shoulder, and stooped to look into his face.