“My father, He is waiting to receive and to bless thee. Cast thyself wholly on the Incarnate Love which embraced thee on the Tree. Say, for His sake, canst thou forgive all, even these Normans thou hast so hated?” “Dost thou forgive the wretch who shut thee up, my gentle boy, in that dungeon?” “Yes, verily, and pray to God to pardon him, too.” “Then I may pardon my foes, although my life has been spent in fighting against them for England’s freedom. But I see we must submit, as thou hast often said, to God’s will; and if the past may be forgiven, my merrie men will be well content to make peace, and to turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; especially now Drogo has met his just doom, as they tell me, and thy friend is about to rule at Walderne. Thou must be the mediator between them and him. “But oh! my son, it has been hard to submit to all this. All those I loved when young carried on the fight, and my own father bequeathed it to me as a sacred heritage. We hoped to see England governed by Englishmen, and the alien cast out; and now I give it up. The problem is too hard for me. God will make it clear.” “My father,” said Martin, “I, too, am the descendant of a long line of warriors, who have never before me submitted to the foreign yoke. But I see that the two peoples are becoming one: that the sons of the Norman learn our English tongue, and that the day is at hand when they will be proud of the name ‘Englishmen.’ Norman and Saxon all alike, one people, even as in heaven there is no distinction of race, but all are alike before the throne.” “And now, my son, art thou not a priest yet? I would fain make confession of my sins.” “God will accept the will for the deed. He is not limited to earthly means; and if thou truly repent of thy sins for the love of the Crucified, and believest in Him, all will be well.” For Martin feared that there would be no time to fetch a priest, or he would not have questioned the universal precept of the church of his day; while his own faith led him to see clearly that God’s mercy was not limited by the accidental omission of the outward ordinance. “I sent for Sir Richard {36}, the parish priest of Walderne, ere we left the castle, and he is doubtless on his way with the Viaticum,” said Kynewulf. And while they yet spake the priest arrived, and the dying man received with simple faith the last sacraments of the Church. After this his people gathered round him. “Tell them,” he said, in stammering tones, for the speech was failing, “what I have said. With thy friend in the castle, and thou in the greenwood, there will be peace.”