influence of inspiration, being directed by an angel.

This was called Dunstan's first miracle.

When he recovered from the fever, and heard of the miracle that he
was said to have wrought, he was greatly pleased, and thought to
turn the good opinion of people to his own advantage by performing
other miracles.

So he made a harp that played in the wind,--now soft, now loud; now
sweet, now solemn. He said that the harp played itself. The people
heard the sounds, full of seeming expression, as though touched by
airy fingers, and, as they could not discredit the evidence of their
own ears, they too reported that the harp played itself. And great
was the fame of Dunstan's harp.

But Dunstan, according to old history, became a very bad man; so bad
that I cannot tell you the worst things that he did. He discovered
his true character at last, notwithstanding his sweetly playing
harp.

He pretended to be a magician. Now a magician, in those old times,
was one who was supposed to know things beyond the reach of common
minds, who pretended to calculate the influence of the stars on a
person's destiny, and who understood the effects of poisonous
vegetables and minerals. The Saxon magicians were chiefly nobles and
monks, and all of their great secrets which are worth knowing are
now understood as simple matters of science, even by schoolboys.

Athelstane's conscience must have been rather restless, I fancy,
concerning young Edwin, his brother, whom he caused to be drowned;
and people with unquiet conscience are usually very superstitious.
At any rate, he made a bosom friend of Dunstan, after the latter
took up the black art, and became greatly interested in magic, much
to the sorrow of the people.

At last a party of the king's friends resolved that the bad
influence of the wily prelate should come to an end. They waylaid
him one dark night, in an unfrequented place, and, binding him hand
and foot, threw him into a miry marsh. But the water was shallow,
and Dunstan kept his nose above the mire, and, after shouting
lustily for help, and floundering about for a long time, he
succeeded in getting out, to make a great deal of noise and trouble
in the world, and we have some strange stories to tell you about him
yet.

Athelstane died in the year 940, and he was succeeded upon the
throne by his half-brother, Edmund, who was the first of the six boy