ost feared to look on him. The horns went again, soft and mellow
in the distance from across the evening meadows. The kine heard
them, and thought them the homing call, and so lifted their lazy
heads and waded homeward through the grass.

"Ethelbert, my king," said Sighard gently.

The eyes of the king opened, and he roused.

"Was that your voice, my thane," he asked, "or was it the voice of
my dream?"

"I called you, lord, for the horns are sounding."

"Thanks; but I would I had dreamed more! I do not know if I should
have learned what it all meant had I slept on."

"What was it, my son?" said Selred.

The king was silent for a little, musing.

"It was a good dream, I think," he said. "I will tell you, and you
shall judge. You mind the little wooden church which stands here in
Fernlea town? Well, in my dream I stood outside that, and it seemed
small and mean for the house of God, so that I would that it were
built afresh. Then it seemed to me that an angel came to me,
bearing a wondrous vessel full of blood, and on the little church
he sprinkled it; and straightway it began to grow and widen
wondrously, and its walls became of stone instead of timber and
wattle, and presently it stood before me as a mighty church, great
as any of those of which Carl's paladin here tells me.

"Then I heard from within the sound of wonderful music and the
singing of many people; and I went near to listen, for the like of
that was never yet heard in our land. And when I was even at the
door, from out the church came in many voices my own name, as if it
were being mingled with praises--and so you woke me."

"It is a good dream," said Sighard bluntly. "It came from the
wondering why Offa let so mean a church stand, and from the horns,
and from my speaking your name. Strange how things like that will
weave themselves into the mind of a sleeping man to make a wonder."

"It is a good dream," said Selred the priest, after a moment's
thought. I doubt not that it was in your mind to give some gift to
the church. Mayhap you shall ask Offa to restore it presently, for
memory of your wedding; and thereafter men will pray there for you
as the founder of its greatness."

"Yet the angel, and that he bore and sprinkled?"

"It seems to me," I said, "that it was a vision of the Holy Grail;
and happy would King Arthur or our Wessex Ina have held you that
you saw it, King Ethelbert."

"Ay," he said, "if I might think that it was so!"

Ag