"I am your prisoner, Henry," said the Duke moodily, “and must submit to the will of Heaven. Do with me as you please; the curse which our father provoked when he invaded a peaceful kingdom is upon me."

"But where is the Black Knight?" asked the King; "our gallant deliverer, to whom the glorious success of this day is so mainly attributable ?"

"He stands yonder," said a page, pointing to the left of the King, "and is, I fear me, grievously hurt, for he pants for breath, and seems scarcely able to support his tottering weight."

"Approach, valiant Sir," said the King; "I trust that you have sustained no hurt which a skilful leech will not know how to cure ?"

"I am not hurt," said the Knight, "but my days are numbered. I have lived to see this day; it is enough-and now would I depart in peace."

The Knight's voice seemed strangely altered: during the battle its stentorian tones had been heard all over the field, but now it was feeble and tremulous. "Unbar his visor," said the King; "surely I have heard that voice before."

The Knight's visor was unbarred, and revealed to the wondering eyes of the King and his attendants the features of the Monk of St. John.

"Did I not tell thee, O King! that at my third visit th ethird event which I had prophesied, the conquest of Normandy, should come to pass before we parted?"

"True, holy Father," said the King, "and thou hast proved thyself the apostle of truth."

"I said, too," added the Monk, and his features changed, and his voice grew more tremulous than ever, as he spake, "that when we did part, we should part for ever. Yet I have something for thy ear, and for the ears of the knights and barons who surround thee, which I would not willingly leave the world without disclosing."

"Support him," said the King; "he is falling!" and two pages hastened to the assistance of the Monk, whose strength was gradually failing him.

"Speak out, old man!" said the King; "who and what art thou ?"

"This," said the Monk, "is the eightieth anniversary of my birth, and the fortieth of my perilous fall and the fall of my country; but, blessed be heaven! my country has retrieved that fall; and I at last can die in peace."

"Reveal thy name," said the King; "for as yet thou speakest riddles."

"My name !" said the old man, and the stentorian strength of his voice seemed to return as he uttered it, "is HAROLD HAROLD the Saxon-Harold the King-Harold the Conquered!"

A bitter groan burst from his heart as he pronounced the last epithet; and he hung down his head for a moment.

The King and his attendants gazed with the intensest interest on the man who they had thought had been so long numbered with the dead. Even the captive Robert forgot his own misfortunes in the presence of his father's once powerful opponent. Harold at length seemed to overcome his emotion, and gazed once more on the assembled princes and barons.

"King of England!" he said, rearing up his stately form, and extending his hands over the Monarch's head, "be thou blessed! thou hast restored the ancient race to the throne; and thou hast conquered the country of the proud Conqueror. Thy reign shall be long and prosperous; thou shalt beget monarchs, in whose veins shall flow the pure stream of Saxon blood; and ages and generations shall pass away, yet still that race shall sit upon the throne of England."

His voice faltered-his eyes grew dim-his uplifted arms fell powerless to his sides—and he sunk a lifeless corse into the arms of the attendants.*

Knighton, from Giraldus Cambrensis, asserts that Harold was not slain at the battle of Hastings, but that escaping, he retired to a cell near St. John's Church, in Chester, and died there an anchoret, as was owned by himself in his last confession, which he made when dying; and in memory whereof, his tomb was shown when Knighton wrote. The same story is told by a contemporary, Eadmer, whom Malmsbury styles "an historian to be praised for his sincerity and truth."

THE

HE Lord Alberic, Earl of Northumberland, sat at the casement of one of the turrets of his castle of Alnwick, and gazed at the lovely scenery which presented itself far and wide to his view. The sun was now sinking behind the western hills; but, as if to make amends for his approaching departure, he was

setting in unclouded magnificence, and with his heavenly alchemy transmuting the sky, the hills, and the river which flowed in the middle distance, into objects whose glory and splendour were no unworthy rivals of his own. By degrees, however, the resplendent orb sunk beneath the horizon; and the glory faded from the sky, and the hills began to cast a dim and gloomy shadow behind them, and the river ceased to show its golden ripples in the valley, and the dews fell from the heavens, and the mists arose from the earth, and darkness was overspreading the face of all things.

“It is thus—it is thus," said Earl Alberic, "with the dream of human ambition! It seems most glorious at the period at which it is about to vanish. The lowliest and the least worthy object of desire the highest and the most unattainable—it gilds alike with its false and flattering beams; and then, while we are yet gazing, it is gone, and the lustre of all those objects is gone with it, and we find the dull cold night of disappointment closing around us."

The Earl Alberic had not always been in the habit of entertaining such sad and gloomy thoughts as these. A very few years had elapsed (for he had as yet seen but five-and-twenty summers) since he had walked out at the hour of sunset, amidst the scenery on which he was now gazing, and had given utterance to such reflections as the following:-"How glorious and wonderful is the career of yon resplendent orb! When he rises, he is hailed by the blessings of all, for they know that his rising promises light, and warmth, and fruitfulness to everything on which he gazes; at noon the promise of his rising is confirmed, and all creation rejoices in his smiles; and at eventide he sinks to rest in a fuller blaze of majesty and splendour than had attended him during the day. Like him would I spend my days. In youth, like him, be hailed with hopefulness; in maturity, like him, dispense blessings and excite admiration; and, like him, when the appointed hour shall come, die surrounded with glory."

While the Earl Alberic was absorbed in these thoughts, he had wandered farther from the castle than he had been accustomed to do at so late an hour; the shadows of evening were gathering round him, and the wind was making that strange, unearthly, and

melancholy, yet withal pleasing and soothing music that so often hymns the dirge of the departed day; so that the incident which then is said to have befallen the Earl Alberic, might perhaps be but the creation of his own excited imagination. As he walked along, and dreams of glory filled his fancy, and a long vista of fame and honour opened before his mental vision, the following words, in a low and shrill, but very distinct tone, were sounded in his ears-Græciæ Dominus eris." He started and looked around him, but no human being was visible. "Ha!" he said, "could my senses deceive me? Methought I heard a glorious destiny promised to me—that I should be Lord of Greece. It was but fancy. I am here alone. The night is closing in, and I must return to the castle." He turned round for the purpose of retracing his steps, when the same words were repeated still more audibly and distinctly: "Græciæ Dominus eris."

Again did the young lord gaze around him, and at the distance of about twenty yards, he perceived a strange and uncouth figure about three feet high, but with a head of most disproportionate size, usurping indeed nearly half its dimensions, clad in a thin green robe, and holding a branch of osier in its hand. "What sayest thou, friend?" asked Alberic, advancing towards this mysterious being; but the figure, instead of answering him, waved its hand, and with threatening gestures seemed to be warning him away. Alberic, however, continued to approach the spot on which it stood; but the moment that he arrived there, although the instant before he had seen it distinctly, he found himself alone.

On his return to the castle, he narrated this strange adventure to his friends and retainers there, who in vain endeavoured to persuade him that the whole was the coinage of his own imagination. He retired to sleep, but not to repose: the strange unearthly form of the Dwarf haunted his dreams, leading by the hand a female of exquisite beauty, whose fine classical features, her flowing but sable drapery, and the wreath of laurel mixed with cypress on her brows, seemed to point her out as a personification of Greece in her then state of suffering and resistance. The dream was so strong and vivid that it broke the chains of