Time, that, like sleep, is the great soother of so many sorrows, healed the wounds which the hard-hearted Odo had caused to be inflicted on the youthful queen, and her surpassing beauty once more broke forth, and erased the burning scars with which it had been disfigured,--like a rose, that, in its full-blown loveliness, leaves no trace of the blight that had settled down upon the bud. With a heart, yearning all the more fondly for her youthful husband, through the sufferings, which had been embittered by his absence, she rushed, on the eager wings of love, to pour her sorrows into his bosom, and to pillow her beautiful head on that heart which had known no rest since their cruel separation; but the demons of destruction were again let loose upon her. She was pursued and overtaken before she had reached those arms which were open to receive her, and so dreadfully was the body of that lovely lady mangled, that the blood rolls back chilly into the heart, while we sit and sigh over her sufferings. We will not pain our readers by describing this unparalleled butchery. But Odo reaped his reward. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord; and before His unerring tribunal the spirit of the mitred murderer, centuries ago, trembled. From the hour of Elgiva's murder, the spirit of Edwin drooped. He seems to have sat like a shadow with the sceptre in his hand, "nerveless, listless, dead." His subjects rebelled against him. Dunstan was recalled from banishment, and new honours were heaped upon his head. Edwin's kingdom was divided, and though his brother Edgar was not more than thirteen years of age, the dominions of Northumbria and Mercia were placed under his sway. The infamous Odo, and his emissaries, were at last triumphant; and there is scarcely a doubt but that, a few years after the death of his wife, Edwin himself was murdered in Gloucestershire. In several old chronicles it is darkly hinted that he met with a violent death: in one, which is still extant in the Cotton Library, it is clearly asserted that he was slain.