murmuring voices.
She rose in alarm--the door of the church was thrown open--torches
advanced--and amongst the monks, between Osgood and Ailred, came the
King. He had come, that last night before his march, to invoke the
prayers of that pious brotherhood; and by the altar he had founded, to
pray, himself, that his one sin of faith forfeited and oath abjured,
might not palsy his arm and weigh on his soul in the hour of his
country's need.

Edith stifled the cry that rose to her lips, as the torches fell on the
pale and hushed and melancholy face of Harold; and she crept away under
the arch of the vast Saxon columns, and into the shade of abutting walls.
The monks and the King, intent on their holy office, beheld not that
solitary and shrinking form. They approached the altar; and there the
King knelt down lowlily, and none heard the prayer. But as Osgood held
the sacred rood over the bended head of the royal suppliant, the Image on
the crucifix (which had been a gift from Alred the prelate, and was
supposed to have belonged of old to Augustine, the first founder of the
Saxon Church--so that, by the superstition of the age, it was invested
with miraculous virtues) bowed itself visibly. Visibly, the pale and
ghastly image of the suffering God bowed over the head of the kneeling
man; whether the fastenings of the rood were loosened, or from what cause
soever,--in the eyes of all the brotherhood, the Image bowed. [254]

A thrill of terror froze every heart, save Edith's, too remote to
perceive the portent, and save the King's, whom the omen seemed to doom,
for his face was buried in his clasped hands. Heavy was his heart, nor
needed it other warnings than its own gloom.

Long and silently prayed the King; and when at last he rose, and the
monks, though with altered and tremulous voices, began their closing
hymn, Edith passed noislessly along the wall, and, stealing through one
of the smaller doors which communicated to the nunnery annexed, gained
the solitude of her own chamber. There she stood, benumbed with the
strength of her emotions at the sight of Harold thus abruptly presented.
How had the fond human heart leapt to meet him! Twice, thus, in the
august ceremonials of Religion, secret, shrinking, unwitnessed, had she,
his betrothed, she, the partner of his soul, stood aloof to behold him.
She had seen him in the hour of his pomp, the crown upon his brow,--seen
him in the hour of his peril and agony, that anoin