“Back again, Wilfrid?  Eh, what is amiss?” said Sighard, starting as he set eyes on Erling.

“Has the king called you?” I asked hastily.

“No; it is hardly time for him to do so,” Selred answered, smiling.

“Look into his chamber softly, I pray you, Father Selred,” Erling said in a strange voice.  “It is upon me that all is not well.”

Now so urgent was the tone in which the Dane spoke that the priest went at once to the inner door and opened it very gently, and peered in.  Then he started forward suddenly and threw the door wide.

“Thanes!” he cried wildly, and we were at his side.

The room was empty.  There was naught but the bed in it, for even the great chair was gone.  Only where it had been there was a square patch of floor which was not covered with the sedges I had noted as so lavishly strown.  Nor was the king in the bed, whose coverings were unruffled.  Sighard lifted its hangings and peered under and behind them in a sort of frantic hope; for though there was no sound, and no answer to his whispering of the well-loved name of his master, it seemed unbelievable that from this little chamber a man should have gone utterly and without a sound during these few minutes.  Yet so it was.

I set my hands on the high sill of the window and drew my face to its level.  It was too narrow for a man to get through, and there was nothing to be seen outside but the white moonlight, and the mist which rose from the Lugg and curled over the rampart, white and ghostly round the sentry, who leaned on his spear and stared at the twinkling hill fires.

“It is wizardry,” said Sighard, groaning, while cold drops broke out on his forehead.  “He has been spirited away.”

“I saw him on the rampart,” answered Erling; “but it was his ghost that I saw.  I knew it, and came and told my master here.”

Now there came a silence in which we looked at one another.  Then Sighard went and began to search the walls for hidden doors—­hopelessly, for the timbers were a full foot thick.  And so of a sudden some frenzy seemed to take him, for he set his hand on his sword, and would have waked the palace with the cry of treason, but that Selred stayed him.

“Friend, friend,” he said earnestly, “have a care—­wait!  We are but two score amid hundreds, and that cry may mean death to us all.

“Wilfrid, call the other thanes hither.”

I went to the door of the council chamber, and there was that in my face which bade the thanes spring up and hurry to me with words of question.  I looked first at the three Mercians; but their faces were blank as those of the Anglians.  They expected naught.

“The king has gone,” I said.  “You Mercians may best know whither.”

One of them laughed, and sat down again.

“You have a strange idea of a jest in Carl’s camp, paladin,” he said.  “What is it?  The king gone, with us sitting here at his door, forsooth!”