Before the time of the Confessor, the West Minster was little more than the Monastery chapel, in which the presence of the parish folk, if not forbidden, was still in no way encouraged. To-day, when the Lord of Ivarsdale came unnoticed into the dim light while the last strains of the vesper service were rising, there were no more than a score of worshippers scattered through the north aisle,—a handful of women, wives of the Abbot’s military tenants, a trader bound for the land beyond the ford, a couple of yeomen and a hollow-eyed pilgrim, drifting with the current of his unsteady mind. After a searching glance around him, the Etheling took up his station in the shelter of a pillar. “Little danger—or hope—is there than I can miss her,” he told himself, “if she is indeed here, as the page said. Yet of all the unlikely places to seek her!” he smiled faintly as the figure in elfin green flitted through his mind. As well look for a wood-nymph at confession—unless indeed, Elfgiva had taken her there against her will—But that was scarcely likely, he remembered immediately afterwards, since an English-woman who had entered into a civil marriage with a Dane would be little apt to frequent an English church. “Doubtless she makes of it a meeting place with her newest lover,” he concluded. And the anger the thought gave him, and a sense of the helplessness of his own position, was so great that he could not remain quiet under it but was tortured into moving restlessly to and fro in the shadow. Tender as the gloaming of a summer day was the shade in the great nave, with the ever-burning candles to remind one of the eternal stars. Now their quivering light called into life, for one brief moment, the golden dove that hung above the altar; now it touched with dazzling brightness the precious service on the holy table itself; again it was veiled by drifting incense as by heaven’s clouds. From the throats of the hidden choir, the last note swelled rich and full, to roll out over the pillared aisles in a wave of vibrant sound and pass away in a sigh of ineffable sweetness under the rafters. As he bowed his head in the holy hush that followed, the hush of souls before a wordless bene-diction, some of Sebert’s bitterness gave way to a great compassion. What were we all, when all was told, but wrong-doers and mourners? Why should one hold anger against another? In pity for himself and the whole world, his heart ached within him, as a rustling of gowns and a shuffling of feet told that the worshippers had risen from their knees and were coming toward him. He raised his bowed head sadly, fearfully.