Then her fortitude and her conscience reasserted themselves. “Courage, my friends,” she cried, “God hath not deserted us, nor our dear country. We have sinned much, and we shall have much to bear. But He has chosen this land for a great work, and He will make all things work together for good till He has accomplished it.” She was silent for a few moments. When she began to speak again, some mighty inspiration seemed to carry her beyond the present and out of herself. “Yes,” she cried, “God hath great things in store for this dear country of ours. I see a great blackness of darkness. From many houses, great and fair, where the rulers of the land lived delicately, shall go up to heaven the smoke of a great burning, and the fields shall be untilled and desolate, and the rivers shall run red with blood. But beyond the darkness I see a light, and the light shines upon a land that is fair as the garden of the Lord; and therein I behold great cities thronged with men, and in the midst of them stately houses of God, such as have never yet been built by skill of human hand. And the people that work and worship there are not of our race, nor yet wholly strange. For the Lord shall make to Himself a people from out of them that know Him not, even from the rovers of the sea; they that pull down His Church shall build it again, and they shall carry His name to many lands, for the sea shall be covered with their ships; and they shall rule over the nations from the one end of heaven to the other.” [Illustration: Carna on the Hillside.] She sank upon her knees, and remained wrapt in prayer, while the crowd stood round and watched her with awe-stricken faces. When she rose again to her feet she was calm. Resolutely she set her face from the scene of her past life, and went her way to meet the future that lay before her. CHAPTER XXX. AT LAST. It was nearly sunset on the second day of the great battle of Badon Hill.(63) The long, desperate fight was over, and the great British champion had turned back for a time the tide of Saxon invasion. The heathen dead lay, rank by rank, as they had fallen, every man in his place, in the great wedge-like formation which had resisted all the efforts of the Britons during the first day of the struggle, and had been with difficulty broken through on the second. The King was sitting amidst a circle of his knights on the top of the hill, resting from his toils. His cross-hilted sword stood fixed in the ground before him. On one side lay his helmet, bearing for its crest a dragon wrought in gold; on the other, his shield, on which was blazoned the figure of the Virgin. A priest approached, walking in front of a party of four who were carrying a litter, and who, at a sign from their leader, set it down before the King.