The spindles revolved, the thread shot, and again there was silence more freezing than before.
"Askest thou," said Hilda at length, passing to the child, as if the question so long addressed to her ear had only just reached her mind; "askest thou if I thought of the Earl and his fair sons ?--yea, I heard the smith welding arms on the anvil, and the hammer of the shipwright shaping strong ribs for the horses of the sea.

Ere the reaper has bound his sheaves, Earl Godwin will scare the Normans in the halls of the Monk-king, as the hawk scares the brood in the dovecot.

Weave well, heed well warf and woof, nimble maidens--strong be the texture, for biting is the worm." "What weave they, then, good grandmother ?" asked the girl, with wonder and awe in her soft mild eyes.
"The winding-sheet of the great!" Hilda's lips closed, but her eyes, yet brighter than before, gazed upon space, and her pale hand seemed tracing letters, like runes, in the air.
Then slowly she turned, and looked forth through the dull window.

"Give me my coverchief and my staff," said she quickly.
Every one of the handmaids, blithe for excuse to quit a task which seemed recently commenced, and was certainly not endeared to them by the knowledge of its purpose communicated to them by the lady, rose to obey.
Unheeding the hands that vied with each other, Hilda took the hood, and drew it partially over her brow.

Leaning lightly on a long staff, the head of which formed a raven, carved from some wood stained black, she passed into the hall, and thence through the desecrated tablinum, into the mighty court formed by the shattered peristyle; there she stopped, mused a moment, and called on Edith.