But as he spoke, the shrill and doleful wail of women came from the porch of the house. "Ah, well-a-day! ah, well-a-day! that I should live to see it. Soul of my soul, Kenric, my first-born and my best one--thou first borne in, almost a corpse; and then, my darling and delight--my fair-haired Edgar's son dead of this doleful fever. Ah, well-a-day! ah, well-a-day! Would God that I were dead also, most miserable that I am, of women!" And then the manly voice of Kenric replied, but faint for his wounds and wavering for the loss of blood; "Wail not for me, mother," he said; "wail not for me, for I am strong yet, and like to live this many a day--until thy toils are ended, and then God do to me as seems him good. But, above all, I say to thee, wail not for Adhemar the white-haired. His weakness and his innocence are over, here on earth. He has never known the collar or the gyves--has never felt how bitter and how hard a thing it is to be the slave of the best earthly master! His dream--his fever-dream of life is over; he is free from yoke and chain; he has awoken out of human servitude, to be the slave of the everlasting God, whose strictest slavery is perfect liberty and perfect love." But still the woman wailed--"Ah, well-a-day! ah, well-a-day! would God that I were dead, most miserable of mothers that I am!" And the Norman barons stood unseen and silent, smitten into dumbness before the regal majesty of the slave's maternal sorrow, perhaps awakened to some dim vision of the truth, which never had dawned on them until that day, in the serf's quarter. CHAPTER VI. THE SAXON'S CONSTANCY. "And I'll be true to thee, Mary, As thou'lt be true to me; And I never will leave thee, never, Mary, As slave man or as free; For we're bound forever and ever, Mary, Till death shall set us free-- Free from the chain of the flesh, Mary, Free from the devil's chain-- Free from the collar and gyves, Mary, And slavery's cursed pain; And then, when we're free in heaven, Mary, We'll pray to be bound again." OLD ENGLISH SONG. It was with grave and somewhat downcast brows, and nothing of haughtiness or pride of port or demeanor, that the lord and his friend entered under the lowly roof, invested for the moment with a majesty which was not its own, by the strange sacredness of grief and death.