How long that slumber lasted he knew not, but he dreamt a strange
and gruesome dream. He thought his ancestors--the whole line of
them--passed before him in succession, all going into the depths of
the wood, and that as each spectral form passed it looked at him
with sorrow and pointed into the forest.
At length, in his dream, his father came and stood by him, and
pointed to the woods likewise.
Meanwhile a lurid light was rising in the woods behind him, and a
sense of imminent danger grew on the sleeper when strange outcries
arose from the wood.
He was on the border land, twixt sleeping and waking, and the
outcries were not all imaginary. There was the voice of one who
besought for mercy, and the laughter and scornful tones of those
who refused it; and these, at least, were real, for they awoke the
sleeper.
The cry which aroused young Wilfred from his sleep was uttered in a
tone of distress, which at once appealed to his manhood for aid.
And it was a familiar voice--that of his own foster brother, the
son of his old nurse, with whom, in the innocent days of childhood,
he had sported and romped again and again; for distinctions of rank
were far less regarded amongst the old English than amongst the
Normans--they were "English all.
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