rtaken voyage and journey on my behalf; but before you impart your
news, I pray you to take rest and food."

"Rest will not be unwelcome; and food, if unrestricted to goats' cheese,
and kid-flesh,--luxuries new to my palate,--will not be untempting; but
neither food nor rest can I take, noble Harold, before I excuse myself,
as a foreigner, for thus somewhat infringing your laws by which we are
banished, and acknowledging gratefully the courteous behavior I have met
from thy countrymen notwithstanding."

"Fair Sir," answered Harold, "pardon us if, jealous of our laws, we have
seemed inhospitable to those who would meddle with them. But the Saxon
is never more pleased than when the foreigner visits him only as the
friend: to the many who settle amongst us for commerce--Fleming, Lombard,
German, and Saracen--we proffer shelter and welcome; to the few who, like
thee, Sir Norman, venture over the seas but to serve us, we give frank
cheer and free hand."

Agreeably surprised at this gracious reception from the son of Godwin,
the Norman pressed the hand extended to him, and then drew forth a small
case, and related accurately, and with feeling, the meeting of his cousin
with Sweyn, and Sweyn's dying charge.

The Earl listened, with eyes bent on the ground, and face turned from the
lamp; and, when Mallet had concluded his recital, Harold said, with an
emotion he struggled in vain to repress:

"I thank you cordially gentle Norman, for kindness kindly rendered!
I--I--" The voice faltered. "Sweyn was very dear to me in his sorrows!
We heard that he had died in Lycia, and grieved much and long. So, after
he had thus spoken to your cousin, he--he----Alas! O Sweyn, my brother!"

"He died," said the Norman, soothingly; "but shriven and absolved; and my
cousin says, calm and hopeful, as they die ever who have knelt at the
Saviour's tomb!"

Harold bowed his head, and turned the case that held the letter again and
again in his hand, but would not venture to open it. The knight himself,
touched by a grief so simple and manly, rose with the delicate instinct
that belongs to sympathy, and retired to the door, without which yet
waited the officer who had conducted him.

Harold did not attempt to detain him, but followed him across the
threshold, and briefly commanding the officer to attend to his guest as
to himself, said: "With the morning, Sire de Granville, we shall meet
again; I see that you are one to whom I need not excus