All the rest of the day the
Tower windows looked out upon a litter of brown heaps, here and there a white
face upturned or a scarf-end fluttering in the autumn wind.
Wild with helpless misery, the Lord of Ivarsdale would have charged the
Berserkers with his handful of armed servants if the old cniht had not
restrained him almost by force; when he spent his breath in railing at
everything between earth and sky.
"It is the folly of it that maddens me," he cried over and over, "the needless
folly! Had I but used my mind to think with, instead of to plan feasts-- I am
moved to dash my brains out when I remember it!"
"Nay, it is my judgment that was lacking," Morcard said bitterly. "I was an
old dog that could not learn a new trick. I should have seen that the old ways
no longer avail. The fault was mine." His wrinkled old face was so haggard
with self-reproach that the Etheling hastily recanted.
"Now I bethink me, I am wrong, and it is no one's fault. It comes of the curse
that lies over the Island. Was there not something rotten in all English
palisades, it would never have happened that the pirates got their first
foothold. But we have shaken off the spell, and they have not mastered us yet.
To-night we will try to get a messenger out to my kinsman in Yorkshire, and
another to my father's friend in Essex."
The next day, and for many days thereafter, the Tower windows stared out like
expectant eyes.
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