voice. "It is upon me that all is not well."

Now so urgent was the tone in which the Dane spoke that the priest
went at once to the inner door and opened it very gently, and
peered in. Then he started forward suddenly and threw the door
wide.

"Thanes!" he cried wildly, and we were at his side.

The room was empty. There was naught but the bed in it, for even
the great chair was gone. Only where it had been there was a square
patch of floor which was not covered with the sedges I had noted as
so lavishly strown. Nor was the king in the bed, whose coverings
were unruffled. Sighard lifted its hangings and peered under and
behind them in a sort of frantic hope; for though there was no
sound, and no answer to his whispering of the well-loved name of
his master, it seemed unbelievable that from this little chamber a
man should have gone utterly and without a sound during these few
minutes. Yet so it was.

I set my hands on the high sill of the window and drew my face to
its level. It was too narrow for a man to get through, and there
was nothing to be seen outside but the white moonlight, and the
mist which rose from the Lugg and curled over the rampart, white
and ghostly round the sentry, who leaned on his spear and stared at
the twinkling hill fires.

"It is wizardry," said Sighard, groaning, while cold drops broke
out on his forehead. "He has been spirited away."

"I saw him on the rampart," answered Erling; "but it was his ghost
that I saw. I knew it, and came and told my master here."

Now there came a silence in which we looked at one another. Then Sighard
went and began to search the walls for hidden doors--hopelessly, for the
timbers were a full foot thick. And so of a sudden some frenzy seemed to
take him, for he set his hand on his sword, and would have waked the
palace with the cry of treason, but that Selred stayed him.

"Friend, friend," he said earnestly, "have a care--wait! We are but
two score amid hundreds, and that cry may mean death to us all.

"Wilfrid, call the other thanes hither."

I went to the door of the council chamber, and there was that in my
face which bade the thanes spring up and hurry to me with words of
question. I looked first at the three Mercians; but their faces
were blank as those of the Anglians. They expected naught.

"The king has gone," I said. "You Mercians may best know whither."

One of them laughed, and sat down again.

"You have a strange idea of a jest in Carl