Here, again, was the chaplain showing his brother-priests with the greatest pride and delight a scroll of Latin, copied from a MS. Psalter of the holy and Venerable Beda by the hand of his own dear pupil, young David. Bertram, who could neither read nor write, and knew no more Latin than his Paternoster, Credo, and Ave, absolutely did not believe his eyes and ears till he had asked the question, whether this were indeed the youth's work. How could it be possible to wield pen as well as lance? But the wonder of all was the Atheling. After an absence of more than a year, there was much to be adjusted, and his authority on his own lands was thoroughly judicial even for life or death, since even under Norman sway he held the power of an earl. Seated in a high-backed, cross-legged chair--his majestic form commanding honour and respect--he heard one after another causes that came before him, reserved for his judgment, questions of heirship, disputes about cattle, complaints of thievery, encroachments on land; and Bertram, listening with the interest that judgment never fails to excite, was deeply impressed with the clear- headedness, the ready thought, and the justice of the decision, even when the dispute lay between Saxon and Norman, always with reference to the laws of Alfred and Edward which he seemed to carry in his head. Indeed, ere long, two Norman knights, hearing of the Atheling's return, came to congratulate him, and lay before him a dispute of boundaries which they declared they would rather entrust to him than to any other. And they treated him far more as a prince than as a Saxon churl. They willingly accepted his invitation to go in to the feast of welcome, and a noble one it was, with music and minstrelsy, hospitality to all around, plenty and joy, wassail bowls going round, and the Atheling presiding over it, and with a strange and quiet influence, breaking up the entertainment in all good will, by the memory of his sweet sister Margaret's grace-cup, ere mirth had become madness, or the English could incur their reproach of coarse revelry. "And," as the Norman knight who had prevailed said to Bertram, "Sir Edgar the Atheling had thus shown himself truly an uncrowned King." IV. WHO SHALL BE KING? The noble cloisters of Romsey, with the grand church rising in their midst, had a lodging-place, strictly cut off from the nunnery, for male visitors. Into this Edgar Atheling rode with his armed train, and as they entered, some strange expression in the faces of the porters and guards met them. "Had my lord heard the news?" demanded a priest, who hastened forward, bowing low. "No, Holy Father. No ill of my sister?" anxiously inquired the Prince. "The Mother Abbess is well, my Lord Atheling; but the King--William the Red--is gone to his account. He was found two eves ago pierced to the heart with an arrow beneath an oak in Malwood Chace."