"Alas, my master! alas, my dear lord! Who has done this? Who could have
done it?" was their cry. "Was there one who did not love and revere him?"
More demonstrative than Alfred had been were they in their lamentations,
for the deepest grief is often the most silent.
At length they raised the body, the temple of so pure and holy a spirit,
which had now returned to the God Who gave it, reverently as men would
have handled the relics of some martyr saint, and placed it on the bier
which they had prepared. Then they began their homeward route, and ere a
long time had passed they stood before the great gate of the castle with
their burden.
It now became a necessity for Alfred to announce the sad news to his
widowed mother; and here the power of language fails us--the shock was
so sudden, so unexpected. The half of her life was so suddenly torn from
the bereaved one, that the pang was well-nigh insupportable. But God
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and has promised that the strength
of His beloved ones shall be even as their day. So He strengthened the
sensitive frame to bear a shock which otherwise might have slain it.
The sounds of lamentation and woe were heard all over the castle as they
slowly bore the body to the domestic chapel, while some drew near,
impelled by an irresistible desire to gaze upon it, and then cried aloud
in excess of woe. Amongst the others, Redwald approached, and gazed
fixedly upon the corpse; and Eric the steward often declared, in later
days, that he saw the wound bleed afresh under the glance of the
ruthless warrior, but perhaps this was an afterthought.
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