and perfect were the contentment and peace which the adjuncts inspired into the hearts of those, who, of late so hopeless and suffering, now looked over the face of the fair earth, and thence upward to the boundless sky, as who should say, "Not in one only, but in both of these, we have our heritage." But while they gazed, the sun sunk lower in the west, the round tops of the vast blue mountains intercepted his lustrous disk, and heavy twilight fell, like the shadow of a cloud, over the valley and the steep faces of the north-eastern hills. Just at this moment, while the girl was whispering something about entering the house and preparing the evening-meal, she observed her husband's eye fixed on the declivity of the hills above the lake shore, and, following the direction of his glance, she speedily discovered a dark figure making its way in a crouching attitude among the stunted shrubs, and evidently avoiding, or striving to avoid, observation. Something between a shudder and a start seemed to shake the manly form of Kenric for an instant; and his young wife, perceiving it as she clung to his arm, looked up to his face for explanation. "Something is going wrong up yonder," said the verdurer; "some marauder after the roe-deer, I trow. I must up and after him. Give me my bugle, Edith, my wood-knife, and my gisarme; I will take the black alan with me; he lies under the settle, by the hearth. Fetch them, girl." And while she went, he stood gazing with his hawk's eye on the lurking figure, though it was wonderful, in the distance and gloom, that he could distinguish even the outlines of the human form. Yet it was evident that he did distinguish something more than that, for he smote his thigh with his hand heavily, as he muttered, "It is he, by St. Edward the Confessor! What new disaster can have brought him hither?" The next moment Edith stood beside him, bearing the weapons, and accompanied by the great grizzly deer-grayhound. "Kenric," she said, as he was leaving her, "this is something more than mere marauders. There is danger!" "I trust not, girl," he answered, kindly; "but if there be, I and Black Balder here, are men enough to brunt it. But hark you, girl, get supper over as quickly as you may, and have our mother to her chamber, and the varlets to their quarter in the kennels; and do you sit up, without a light, mark me, and, whatever shall fall out, be silent. I may bring some one with me." "I knew it," she murmured to herself, as she turned away to do his bidding. "It is Eadwulf. What brings him hither? No good, I warrant me." Meanwhile Kenric scaled the crags rapidly, with the hound at his heels, and, when he reached the spot where he had seen the figure, halted, and whistled a bar or two of an old Saxon ballad of Sherwood. It was answered, and from out of the brushwood Eadwulf came, cringing, travel-soiled, weary, and disaster-stricken, to the knees almost of his brother.