stood in the same position as an overseer, or relieving officer, having also to perform the duty of chief constable, and to warn the hundred when the folk-mote or folcgemot was to assemble. If he neglected to distribute the royal charity, he was fined thirty shillings, which was divided amongst the poor of the neighbouring tything. High, however, as the character of Athelstan stands, it is not free from the stains which too often blotted the brightest names that adorned this barbarous age, though we cannot tell, at this remote period, how reluctantly he may have yielded to the stern sentence of his witenagemot, when he consigned his brother to death. Edwin had been leagued with others to oppose the accession of Athelstan to the throne, and the king ordered him to be placed within the "Rotten carcass of a boat, nor rigged, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast," and without even an oar, to be launched upon the ocean, and left to chance, and the mercy of the waves. For some time the unfortunate prince continued to keep afloat within sight of land, until at last the wind rose, and perceiving that every billow but rolled him further into the hopeless ocean, he preferred an instant to a lingering death, and leaped boldly into the deep. His body was afterwards washed ashore, and for seven years Athelstan is said to have mourned over his brother's death, with deep and bitter sorrow. Athelstan died about the year 940 or 941; and, as he left no children, he was succeeded by his brother Edmund. CHAPTER XXVI. THE REIGNS OF EDMUND AND EDRED. "The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir As life were in't: I have supped full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.--Wherefore was that cry? The king, my lord, is dead."--SHAKSPERE.