the hall; there, with eyes fast filling with tears, they watched
the departing band as it entered into the forest, then gorgeous
with all the tints of autumn, the golden tints of the ash and elm,
the reddish-brown of the beech--all combining to make a picture,
exceeding even the tender hues of spring in beauty.

But all this loveliness was the beauty of decay, the prelude to the
fall of the leaf; the forests were but arrayed in their richest
garb for the coming death of winter.

Into these forests, prophetic in their hues of decay, glided the
brilliant train of Edmund, the last English lord of Aescendune.

Farewell, noble hearts! Happier far ye who go forth to die for your
country than they who shall live to witness her captivity.

CHAPTER II. THE BLACK AND DARK NIGHT.

It was the evening of Saturday, the 14th of October, in the year of
grace 1066.

All was over; the standard--the royal standard of Harold--had gone
down in blood, and England's sun had set for generations on the
fatal field of Senlac or Hastings.

The orb of day had gone down gloomily; had it but gone down one
hour earlier, all might yet have been well; it but lingered to
behold the foe in possession of the hill where the last gallant
Englishmen died with Harold, not one who fought around the standard
surviving their king.

The wind had arisen, and was howling in fitful gusts across the
ensanguined plain of the dead; dark night gathered over the gloomy
slopes, conquered at such lavish waste of human life--dark, but not
silent; for in every direction arose the moans of the wounded and
dying.

On the fatal hill, where the harvest of death had been thickest,
the Conqueror had caused his ducal pavilion to be reared, just
where Harold's standard had stood, and where the ruined altar of
Battle Abbey stands now. They had cleared away the bodies to make
room for the tent, but the ground was sodden with the blood of both
Englishman and Norman.

The sounds of revelry issued from beneath those gorgeous hangings,
and mocked the plaintive cries of the sufferers around.

"O Earth, Earth, such are thy rulers!" exclaimed a solemn voice.
"To gratify one man's ambition, this scene disfigures thy surface,
and mocks the image of God in man."

So spake a good monk, Norman although he was, who had followed
Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, into England as his chaplain,
selected because he could speak the English tongue--that warrior
prelate, who in conjun