Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
Harold : the Last of the Saxon Kings — Complete
CHAPTER III
Githa, Earl Godwin’s wife, sate in her chamber, and her heart was sad. In the room was one of her sons, the one dearer to her than all, Wolnoth, her darling. For the rest of her sons were stalwart and strong of frame, and in their infancy she had known not a mother’s fears. But Wolnoth had come into the world before his time, and sharp had been the travail of the mother, and long between life and death the struggle of the newborn babe. And his cradle had been rocked with a trembling knee, and his pillow been bathed with hot tears. Frail had been his childhood—a thing that hung on her care; and now, as the boy grew, blooming and strong, into youth, the mother felt that she had given life twice to her child. Therefore was he more dear to her than the rest; and, therefore, as she gazed upon him now, fair and smiling, and hopeful, she mourned for him more than for Sweyn, the outcast and criminal, on his pilgrimage of woe, to the waters of Jordan, and the tomb of our Lord. For Wolnoth, selected as the hostage for the faith of his house, was to be sent from her arms to the Court of William the Norman. And the youth smiled and was gay, choosing vestment and mantle, and ateghars of gold, that he might be flaunting and brave in the halls of knighthood and the beauty,—the school of the proudest chivalry of the Christian world. Too young, and too thoughtless, to share the wise hate of his elders for the manners and forms of the foreigners, their gaiety and splendour, as his boyhood had seen them, relieving the gloom of the cloister court, and contrasting the spleen and the rudeness of the Saxon temperament, had dazzled his fancy and half Normanised his mind. A proud and happy boy was he, to go as hostage for the faith, and representative of the rank, of his mighty kinsmen; and step into manhood in the eyes of the dames of Rouen.
By Wolnoth’s side stood his young sister, Thyra, a mere infant; and her innocent sympathy with her brother’s pleasure in gaud and toy saddened Githa yet more.
“O my son!” said the troubled mother, “why, of all my children, have they chosen thee? Harold is wise against danger, and Tostig is fierce against foes, and Gurth is too loving to awake hate in the sternest, and from the mirth of sunny Leofwine sorrow glints aside, as the shaft from the sheen of a shield. But thou, thou, O beloved!—cursed be the king that chose thee, and cruel was the father that forgot the light of the mother’s eyes!”
“Tut, mother the dearest,” said Wolnoth, pausing from the contemplation of a silk robe, all covered with broidered peacocks, which had been sent him as a gift from his sister the Queen, and wrought with her own fair hands; for a notable needle-woman, despite her sage lere, was the wife of the Saint King, as sorrowful women mostly are,—“Tut! the bird must leave the nest when the wings are fledged. Harold the eagle, Tostig the kite, Gurth the ring-dove, and Leofwine the stare. See, my wings are the richest of all, mother, and bright is the sun in which thy peacock shall spread his pranked plumes.”
Then, observing that his liveliness provoked no smile from his mother, he approached and said more seriously:
“Bethink thee, mother mine. No other choice was left to king or to father. Harold, and Tostig, and Leofwine, have their lordships and offices. Their posts are fixed, and they stand as the columns of our house. And Gurth is so young, and so Saxish and so the shadow of Harold, that his hate to the Norman is a by-word already among our youths; for hate is the more marked in a temper of love, as the blue of this border seems black against the white of the woof. But I;—the good King knows that I shall be welcome, for the Norman knights love Wolnoth, and I have spent hours by the knees of Montgommeri and Grantmesnil, listening to the feats of Rolf-ganger, and playing with their gold chains of knighthood. And the stout Count himself shall knight me, and I shall come back with the spurs of gold which thy ancestors, the brave Kings of Norway and Daneland, wore ere knighthood was known. Come, kiss me, my mother, and come see the brave falcons Harold has sent me:—true Welch!”
Githa rested her face on her son’s shoulder, and her tears blinded her. The door opened gently, and Harold entered; and with the Earl, a pale dark-haired boy, Haco; the son of Sweyn.
But Githa, absorbed in her darling Wolnoth, scarce saw the grandchild reared afar from her knees, and hurried at once to Harold. In his presence she felt comfort and safety; for Wolnoth leant on her heart, and her heart leant on Harold.
“O son, son!” she cried, “firmest of hand, surest of faith, and wisest of brain, in the house of Godwin, tell me that he yonder, he thy young brother, risks no danger in the halls of the Normans!”
“Not more than in these, mother,” answered Harold, soothing her, with caressing lip and gentle tone. “Fierce and ruthless, men say, is William the Duke against foes with their swords in their hands, but debonnair and mild to the gentle 105, frank host and kind lord. And these Normans have a code of their own, more grave than all morals, more binding than even their fanatic religion. Thou knowest it well, mother, for it comes from thy race of the North, and this code of honour, they call it, makes Wolnoth’s head as sacred as the relics of a saint set in zimmes. Ask only, my brother, when thou comest in sight of the Norman Duke, ask only ‘the kiss of peace,’ and, that kiss on thy brow, thou wilt sleep more safe than if all the banners of England waved over thy couch.” 106
“But how long shall the exile be?” asked Githa, comforted. Harold’s brow fell.
“Mother, not even to cheer thee will I deceive. The time of the hostageship rests with the King and the Duke. As long as the one affects fear from the race of Godwin, as long as the other feigns care for such priests or such knights as were not banished from the realm, being not courtiers, but scattered wide and far in convent and homestead, so long will Wolnoth and Haco be guests in the Norman halls.”
Githa wrung her hands.
“But comfort, my mother; Wolnoth is young, his eye is keen, and his spirit prompt and quick. He will mark these Norman captains, he will learn their strength and their weakness, their manner of war, and he will come back, not as Edward the King came, a lover of things un-Saxon, but able to warn and to guide us against the plots of the camp-court, which threatens more, year by year, the peace of the world. And he will see there arts we may worthily borrow: not the cut of a tunic, and the fold of a gonna, but the arts of men who found states and build nations. William the Duke is splendid and wise; merchants tell us how crafts thrive under his iron hand, and war-men say that his forts are constructed with skill and his battle-schemes planned as the mason plans key-stone and arch, with weight portioned out to the prop, and the force of the hand made tenfold by the science of the brain. So that the boy will return to us a man round and complete, a teacher of greybeards, and the sage of his kin; fit for earldom and rule, fit for glory and England. Grieve not, daughter of the Dane kings, that thy son, the best loved, hath nobler school and wider field than his brothers.”
This appeal touched the proud heart of the niece of Canute the Great, and she almost forgot the grief of her love in the hope of her ambition.
She dried her tears and smiled upon Wolnoth, and already, in the dreams of a mother’s vanity, saw him great as Godwin in council, and prosperous as Harold in the field. Nor, half Norman as he was, did the young man seem insensible of the manly and elevated patriotism of his brother’s hinted lessons, though he felt they implied reproof. He came to the Earl, whose arm was round his mother, and said with a frank heartiness not usual to a nature somewhat frivolous and irresolute:
“Harold, thy tongue could kindle stones into men, and warm those men into Saxons. Thy Wolnoth shall not hang his head with shame when he comes back to our merrie land with shaven locks and spurs of gold. For if thou doubtest his race from his look, thou shalt put thy right hand on his heart, and feel England beat there in every pulse.”
“Brave words, and well spoken,” cried the Earl, and he placed his hand on the boy’s head as in benison.
Till then, Haco had stood apart, conversing with the infant Thyra, whom his dark, mournful face awed and yet touched, for she nestled close to him, and put her little hand in his; but now, inspired no less than his cousin by Harold’s noble speech, he came proudly forward by Wolnoth’s side, and said:
“I, too, am English, and I have the name of Englishman to redeem.”
Ere Harold could reply, Githa exclaimed:
“Leave there thy right hand on my child’s head, and say, simply: ‘By my troth and my plight, if the Duke detain Wolnoth, son of Githa, against just plea, and King’s assent to his return, I, Harold, will, failing letter and nuncius, cross the seas, to restore the child to the mother.’” 107 Harold hesitated.
A sharp cry of reproach that went to his heart broke from Githa’s lips.
“Ah! cold and self-heeding, wilt thou send him to bear a peril from which thou shrinkest thyself?”
“By my troth and my plight, then,” said the Earl, “if, fair time elapsed, peace in England, without plea of justice, and against my king’s fiat, Duke William of Normandy detain the hostages;—thy son and this dear boy, more sacred and more dear to me for his father’s woes,—I will cross the seas, to restore the child to the mother, the fatherless to his fatherland. So help me, all-seeing One, Amen and Amen!”
CHAPTER IV
We have seen, in an earlier part of this record, that Harold possessed, amongst his numerous and more stately possessions, a house, not far from the old Roman dwelling-place of Hilda. And in this residence he now (save when with the King) made his chief abode. He gave as the reasons for his selection, the charm it took, in his eyes, from that signal mark of affection which his ceorls had rendered him, in purchasing the house and tilling the ground in his absence; and more especially the convenience of its vicinity to the new palace at Westminster; for, by Edward’s special desire, while the other brothers repaired to their different domains, Harold remained near his royal person. To use the words of the great Norwegian chronicler, “Harold was always with the Court itself, and nearest to the King in all service.”
“The King loved him very much, and kept him as his own son, for he had no children.”’ This attendance on Edward was naturally most close at the restoration to power of the Earl’s family. For Harold, mild and conciliating, was, like Alred, a great peacemaker, and Edward had never cause to complain of him, as he believed he had of the rest of that haughty house. But the true spell which made dear to Harold the rude building of timber, with its doors open all day to his lithsmen, when with a light heart he escaped from the halls of Westminster, was the fair face of Edith his neighbour. The impression which this young girl had made upon Harold seemed to partake of the strength of a fatality. For Harold had loved her before the marvellous beauty of her womanhood began; and, occupied from his earliest youth in grave and earnest affairs, his heart had never been frittered away on the mean and frivolous affections of the idle. Now, in that comparative leisure of his stormy life, he was naturally most open to the influence of a charm more potent than all the glamoury of Hilda.
The autumn sun shone through the golden glades of the forest-land, when Edith sate alone on the knoll that faced forestland and road, and watched afar.
And the birds sung cheerily; but that was not the sound for which Edith listened: and the squirrel darted from tree to tree on the sward beyond; but not to see the games of the squirrel sat Edith by the grave of the Teuton. By-and-by, came the cry of the dogs, and the tall gre-hound 108 of Wales emerged from the bosky dells. Then Edith’s heart heaved, and her eyes brightened. And now, with his hawk on his wrist, and his spear 109 in his hand, came, through the yellowing boughs, Harold the Earl.
And well may ye ween, that his heart beat as loud and his eye shone as bright as Edith’s, when he saw who had watched for his footsteps on the sepulchral knoll; Love, forgetful of the presence of Death;—so has it ever been, so ever shall it be! He hastened his stride, and bounded up the gentle hillock, and his dogs, with a joyous bark, came round the knees of Edith. Then Harold shook the bird from his wrist, and it fell, with its light wing, on the altar-stone of Thor.
“Thou art late, but thou art welcome, Harold my kinsman,” said Edith, simply, as she bent her face over the hounds, whose gaunt heads she caressed.
“Call me not kinsman,” said Harold, shrinking, and with a dark cloud on his broad brow.
“And why, Harold?”
“Oh, Edith, why?” murmured Harold; and his thought added, “she knows not, poor child, that in that mockery of kinship the Church sets its ban on our bridals.”
He turned, and chid his dogs fiercely as they gambolled in rough glee round their fair friend.
The hounds crouched at the feet of Edith; and Edith looked in mild wonder at the troubled face of the Earl.
“Thine eyes rebuke me, Edith, more than my words the hounds!” said Harold, gently. “But there is quick blood in my veins; and the mind must be calm when it would control the humour. Calm was my mind, sweet Edith, in the old time, when thou wert an infant on my knee, and wreathing, with these rude hands, flower-chains for thy neck like the swan’s down, I said, ‘The flowers fade, but the chain lasts when love weaves it.’”
Edith again bent her face over the crouching hounds. Harold gazed on her with mournful fondness; and the bird still sung and the squirrel swung himself again from bough to bough. Edith spoke first:
“My godmother, thy sister, hath sent for me, Harold, and I am to go to the Court to-morrow. Shalt thou be there?”
“Surely,” said Harold, in an anxious voice, “surely, I will be there! So my sister hath sent for thee: wittest thou wherefore?”
Edith grew very pale, and her tone trembled as she answered:
“Well-a-day, yes.”
“It is as I feared, then!” exclaimed Harold, in great agitation; “and my sister, whom these monks have demented, leagues herself with the King against the law of the wide welkin and the grand religion of the human heart. Oh!” continued the Earl, kindling into an enthusiasm, rare to his even moods, but wrung as much from his broad sense as from his strong affection, “when I compare the Saxon of our land and day, all enervated and decrepit by priestly superstition, with his forefathers in the first Christian era, yielding to the religion they adopted in its simple truths, but not to that rot of social happiness and free manhood which this cold and lifeless monarchism—making virtue the absence of human ties—spreads around—which the great Bede 110, though himself a monk, vainly but bitterly denounced;—yea, verily, when I see the Saxon already the theowe of the priest, I shudder to ask how long he will be folk-free of the tyrant.”
He paused, breathed hard, and seizing, almost sternly, the girl’s trembling arm, he resumed between his set teeth: “So they would have thee be a nun?—Thou wilt not,—thou durst not,—thy heart would perjure thy vows!”
“Ah, Harold!” answered Edith, moved out of all bashfulness by his emotion and her own terror of the convent, and answering, if with the love of a woman, still with all the unconsciousness of a child: “Better, oh better the grate of the body than that of the heart!—In the grave I could still live for those I love; behind the Grate, love itself must be dead. Yes, thou pitiest me, Harold; thy sister, the Queen, is gentle and kind; I will fling myself at her feet, and say: ‘Youth is fond, and the world is fair: let me live my youth, and bless God in the world that he saw was good!’”
“My own, own dear Edith!” exclaimed Harold, overjoyed. “Say this. Be firm: they cannot and they dare not force thee! The law cannot wrench thee against thy will from the ward of thy guardian Hilda; and, where the law is, there Harold at least is strong,—and there at least our kinship, if my bane, is thy blessing.”
“Why, Harold, sayest thou that our kinship is thy bane? It is so sweet to me to whisper to myself, ‘Harold is of thy kith, though distant; and it is natural to thee to have pride in his fame, and joy in his presence!’ Why is that sweetness to me, to thee so bitter?”
“Because,” answered Harold, dropping the hand he had clasped, and folding his arms in deep dejection, “because but for that I should say: ‘Edith, I love thee more than a brother: Edith, be Harold’s wife!’ And were I to say it, and were we to wed, all the priests of the Saxons would lift up their hands in horror, and curse our nuptials, and I should be the bann’d of that spectre the Church; and my house would shake to its foundations; and my father, and my brothers, and the thegns and the proceres, and the abbots and prelates, whose aid makes our force, would gather round me with threats and with prayers, that I might put thee aside. And mighty as I am now, so mighty once was Sweyn my brother; and outlaw as Sweyn is now, might Harold be; and outlaw if Harold were, what breast so broad as his could fill up the gap left in the defence of England? And the passions that I curb, as a rider his steed, might break their rein; and, strong in justice, and child of Nature, I might come, with banner and mail, against Church, and House, and Fatherland; and the blood of my countrymen might be poured like water: and, therefore, slave to the lying thraldom he despises, Harold dares not say to the maid of his love, ‘Give me thy right hand, and be my bride!’”
Edith had listened in bewilderment and despair, her eyes fixed on his, and her face locked and rigid, as if turned to stone. But when he had ceased, and, moving some steps away, turned aside his manly countenance, that Edith might not perceive its anguish, the noble and sublime spirit of that sex which ever, when lowliest, most comprehends the lofty, rose superior both to love and to grief; and rising, she advanced, and placing her slight hand on his stalwart shoulder, she said, half in pity, half in reverence: “Never before, O Harold, did I feel so proud of thee: for Edith could not love thee as she doth, and will till the grave clasp her, if thou didst not love England more than Edith. Harold, till this hour I was a child, and I knew not my own heart: I look now into that heart, and I see that I am woman. Harold, of the cloister I have now no fear: and all life does not shrink—no, it enlarges, and it soars into one desire—to be worthy to pray for thee!”
“Maid, maid!” exclaimed Harold, abruptly, and pale as the dead, “do not say thou hast no fear of the cloister. I adjure, I command thee, build not up between us that dismal everlasting wall. While thou art free Hope yet survives—a phantom, haply but Hope still.”
“As thou wilt I will,” said Edith, humbly: “order my fate so as pleases thee the best.”
Then, not daring to trust herself longer, for she felt the tears rushing to her eyes, she turned away hastily, and left him alone beside the altar-stone and the tomb.
CHAPTER V
The next day, as Harold was entering the palace of Westminster, with intent to seek the King’s lady, his father met him in one of the corridors, and, taking him gravely by the hand said:
“My son, I have much on my mind regarding thee and our House; come with me.”
“Nay,” said the Earl, “by your leave let it be later. For I have it on hand to see my sister, ere confessor, or monk, or schoolman, claim her hours!”
“Not so, Harold,” said the Earl, briefly. “My daughter is now in her oratory, and we shall have time enow to treat of things mundane ere she is free to receive thee, and to preach to thee of things ghostly, the last miracle at St. Alban’s, or the last dream of the King, who would be a great man and a stirring, if as restless when awake as he is in his sleep. Come.”
Harold, in that filial obedience which belonged, as of course, to his antique cast of character, made no farther effort to escape, but with a sigh followed Godwin into one of the contiguous chambers.
“Harold,” then said Earl Godwin, after closing the door carefully, “thou must not let the King keep thee longer in dalliance and idleness: thine earldom needs thee without delay. Thou knowest that these East Angles, as we Saxons still call them, are in truth mostly Danes and Norsemen; people jealous and fierce, and free, and more akin to the Normans than to the Saxons. My whole power in England hath been founded, not less on my common birth with the freefolk of Wessex—Saxons like myself, and therefore easy for me, a Saxon, to conciliate and control—than on the hold I have ever sought to establish, whether by arms or by arts, over the Danes in the realm. And I tell and I warn thee, Harold, as the natural heir of my greatness, that he who cannot command the stout hearts of the Anglo-Danes, will never maintain the race of Godwin in the post they have won in the vanguard of Saxon England.”
“This I wot well, my father,” answered Harold; “and I see with joy, that while those descendants of heroes and freemen are blended indissolubly with the meeker Saxon, their freer laws and hardier manners are gradually supplanting, or rather regenerating, our own.”
Godwin smiled approvingly on his son, and then his brow becoming serious, and the dark pupil of his blue eye dilating, he resumed:
“This is well, my son; and hast thou thought also, that while thou art loitering in these galleries, amidst the ghosts of men in monk cowls, Siward is shadowing our House with his glory, and all north the Humber rings with his name? Hast thou thought that all Mercia is in the hands of Leofric our rival, and that Algar his son, who ruled Wessex in my absence, left there a name so beloved, that had I stayed a year longer, the cry had been ‘Algar’, not ‘Godwin’?—for so is the multitude ever! Now aid me, Harold, for my soul is troubled, and I cannot work alone; and though I say naught to others, my heart received a death-blow when tears fell from its blood-springs on the brow of Sweyn, my first-born.” The old man paused, and his lip quivered.
“Thou, thou alone, Harold, noble boy, thou alone didst stand by his side in the hall; alone, alone, and I blessed thee in that hour over all the rest of my sons. Well, well! now to earth again. Aid me, Harold. I open to thee my web: complete the woof when this hand is cold. The new tree that stands alone in the plain is soon nipped by the winter; fenced round with the forest, its youth takes shelter from its fellows 111. So is it with a house newly founded; it must win strength from the allies that it sets round its slender stein. What had been Godwin, son of Wolnoth, had he not married into the kingly house of great Canute? It is this that gives my sons now the right to the loyal love of the Danes. The throne passed from Canute and his race, and the Saxons again had their hour; and I gave, as Jephtha gave his daughter, my blooming Edith, to the cold bed of the Saxon King. Had sons sprung from that union, the grandson of Godwin, royal alike from Saxon and Dane, would reign on the throne of the isle. Fate ordered otherwise, and the spider must weave web anew. Thy brother, Tostig, has added more splendour than solid strength of our line, in his marriage with the daughter of Baldwin the Count. The foreigner helps us little in England. Thou, O Harold, must bring new props to the House. I would rather see thee wed to the child of one of our great rivals than to the daughter of kaisar, or outland king. Siward hath no daughter undisposed of. Algar, son of Leofric, hath a daughter fair as the fairest; make her thy bride that Algar may cease to be a foe. This alliance will render Mercia, in truth, subject to our principalities, since the stronger must quell the weaker. It doth more. Algar himself has married into the royalty of Wales 112. Thou wilt win all those fierce tribes to thy side. Their forces will gain thee the marches, now held so feebly under Rolf the Norman, and in case of brief reverse, or sharp danger, their mountains will give refuge from all foes. This day, greeting Algar, he told me he meditated bestowing his daughter on Gryffyth, the rebel under-King of North Wales. Therefore,” continued the old Earl, with a smile, “thou must speak in time, and win and woo in the same breath. No hard task, methinks, for Harold of the golden tongue.”
“Sir, and father,” replied the young Earl, whom the long speech addressed to him had prepared for its close, and whose habitual self-control saved him from disclosing his emotion, “I thank you duteously, for your care for my future, and hope to profit by your wisdom. I will ask the King’s leave to go to my East Anglians, and hold there a folkmuth, administer justice, redress grievances, and make thegn and ceorl content with Harold, their Earl. But vain is peace in the realm, if there is strife in the house. And Aldyth, the daughter of Algar, cannot be house-wife to me.”
“Why?” asked the old Earl, calmly, and surveying his son’s face with those eyes so clear yet so unfathomable.
“Because, though I grant her fair, she pleases not my fancy, nor would give warmth to my hearth. Because, as thou knowest well, Algar and I have ever been opposed, both in camp and in council; and I am not the man who can sell my love, though I may stifle my anger. Earl Harold needs no bride to bring spearmen to his back at his need; and his lordships he will guard with the shield of a man, not the spindle of a woman.”
“Said in spite and in error,” replied the old Earl, coolly. “Small pain had it given thee to forgive Algar old quarrels, and clasp his hand as a father-in-law—if thou hadst had for his daughter what the great are forbidden to regard save as a folly.”
“Is love a folly, my father?”
“Surely, yes,” said the Earl, with some sadness—“surely, yes, for those who know that life is made up of business and care, spun out in long years, nor counted by the joys of an hour. Surely, yes; thinkest thou that I loved my first wife, the proud sister of Canute, or that Edith, thy sister, loved Edward, when he placed the crown on her head?”
“My father, in Edith, my sister, our House has sacrificed enow to selfish power.”
“I grant it, to selfish power,” answered the eloquent old man, “but not enow for England’s safety. Look to it, Harold; thy years, and thy fame, and thy state, place thee free from my control as a father, but not till thou sleepest in thy cerements art thou free from that father—thy land! Ponder it in thine own wise mind—wiser already than that which speaks to it under the hood of grey hairs. Ponder it, and ask thyself if thy power, when I am dead, is not necessary to the weal of England? and if aught that thy schemes can suggest would so strengthen that power, as to find in the heart of the kingdom a host of friends like the Mercians;—or if there could be a trouble and a bar to thy greatness, a wall in thy path, or a thorn in thy side, like the hate or the jealousy of Algar, the son of Leofric?”
Thus addressed, Harold’s face, before serene and calm, grew overcast; and he felt the force of his father’s words when appealing to his reason—not to his affections. The old man saw the advantage he had gained, and prudently forbore to press it. Rising, he drew round him his sweeping gonna lined with furs, and only when he reached the door, he added:
“The old see afar; they stand on the height of experience, as a warder on the crown of a tower; and I tell thee, Harold, that if thou let slip this golden occasion, years hence—long and many—thou wilt rue the loss of the hour. And that, unless Mercia, as the centre of the kingdom, be reconciled to thy power, thou wilt stand high indeed—but on the shelf of a precipice. And if, as I suspect, thou lovest some other who now clouds thy perception, and will then check thy ambition, thou wilt break her heart with thy desertion, or gnaw thine own with regret. For love dies in possession—ambition has no fruition, and so lives forever.”
“That ambition is not mine, my father,” exclaimed Harold, earnestly; “I have not thy love of power, glorious in thee, even in its extremes. I have not thy——”
“Seventy years!” interrupted the old man, concluding the sentence. “At seventy all men who have been great will speak as I do; yet all will have known love. Thou not ambitious, Harold? Thou knowest not thyself, nor knowest thou yet what ambition is. That which I see far before me as thy natural prize, I dare not, or I will not say. When time sets that prize within reach of thy spear’s point, say then, ‘I am not ambitious!’ Ponder and decide.”
And Harold pondered long, and decided not as Godwin could have wished. For he had not the seventy years of his father, and the prize lay yet in the womb of the mountains; though the dwarf and the gnome were already fashioning the ore to the shape of a crown.
