d his thoughts. Expediencies began to dim to his conscience
the healthful loveliness of Truth. And now, too, gradually, that empire
which Hilda had gained over his brother Sweyn began to sway this man,
heretofore so strong in his sturdy sense. The future became to him a
dazzling mystery, into which his conjectures plunged themselves more and
more. He had not yet stood in the Runic circle and invoked the dead; but
the spells were around his heart, and in his own soul had grown up the
familiar demon.

Still Edith reigned alone, if not in his thoughts at least in his
affections; and perhaps it was the hope of conquering all obstacles to
his marriage that mainly induced him to propitiate the Church, through
whose agency the object he sought must be attained; and still that hope
gave the brightest lustre to the distant crown. But he who admits
Ambition to the companionship of Love, admits a giant that outstrides the
gentler footsteps of its comrade.

Harold's brow lost its benign calm. He became thoughtful and abstracted.
He consulted Edith less, Hilda more. Edith seemed to him now not wise
enough to counsel. The smile of his Fylgia, like the light of the star
upon a stream, lit the surface, but could not pierce to the deep.

Meanwhile, however, the policy of Harold throve and prospered. He had
already arrived at that height, that the least effort to make power
popular redoubled its extent. Gradually all voices swelled the chorus in
his praise; gradually men became familiar to the question, "If Edward
dies before Edgar, the grandson of Ironsides, is of age to succeed, where
can we find a king like Harold?"

In the midst of this quiet but deepening sunshine of his fate, there
burst a storm, which seemed destined either to darken his day or to
disperse every cloud from the horizon. Algar, the only possible rival to
his power--the only opponent no arts could soften--Algar, whose
hereditary name endeared him to the Saxon laity, whose father's most
powerful legacy was the love of the Saxon Church, whose martial and
turbulent spirit had only the more elevated him in the esteem of the
warlike Danes in East Anglia (the earldom in which he had succeeded
Harold), by his father's death, lord of the great principality of
Mercia--availed himself of that new power to break out again into
rebellion. Again he was outlawed, again he leagued with the fiery
Gryffyth. All Wales was in revolt; the Marches were invaded and laid
w