Quick-witted, of tenacious memory, a ready and fluent speaker, gay and genial in address, an artist, a musician, he was at the same time an indefatigable worker alike at books or handicraft.

As his sphere began to widen we see him followed by a train of pupils, busy with literature, writing, harping, painting, designing.

One morning a lady summons him to her house to design a robe which she is embroidering, and as he bends with her maidens over their toil his harp hung upon the wall sounds without mortal touch tones which the excited ears around frame into a joyous antiphon.
[Sidenote: Conquest of the Danelaw] From this scholar-life Dunstan was called to a wider sphere of activity towards the close of Eadmund's reign.

But the old jealousies revived at his reappearance at court, and counting the game lost Dunstan prepared again to withdraw.

The king had spent the day in the chase; the red deer which he was pursuing dashed over Cheddar cliffs, and his horse only checked itself on the brink of the ravine at the moment when Eadmund in the bitterness of death was repenting of his injustice to Dunstan.