tale is told either way.

When the cruel deed was done, the Warden and the servants who were with him, took the lifeless body, and carried it out secretly by the postern, and at first thought of throwing it into the river.

But remembering that the Queen had ordered it to be buried, Cymbert made the others dig a great hole, into which they flung it, and, such was the wildness and lawlessness of the time, when they had covered it up, and stamped down the earth upon it, they thought that the whole matter was ended.

That was a very great mistake, however, for, although the deed was done, there were many, many consequences to follow. It was as when a stone is thrown into the midst of a pond. The stone may sink, but in sinking it makes ripples which go on widening and widening until they cover the whole surface of the water.

Of course the murder could not be hidden, for on the very next morning the East Anglian thanes and noblemen demanded to know what had become of their Master, and when they discovered the fate that had befallen him, they made haste to flee, in case they too should be murdered.

Then the next thing that happened was that Princess Elfrida, the poor broken-hearted young bride, felt so shocked and terrified at the thought that her own father had allowed the man she was about to marry to be put to death in such a treacherous manner, that she was afraid to live at home any longer, so she slipped out of the Palace, accompanied by one or two trusty attendants, and fled to a monastery at Crowland in the Fen country, where she became a nun.

Perhaps that was the first thing that made King Offa’s conscience begin to prick, but, like King Ahab, he tried to brazen the matter out; saying to himself, “The deed is done and I cannot undo it, so I may as well have the Kingdom.” So he sent an army to East Anglia, and took possession of it.

But I think that all the time he must have been feeling more and more unhappy, for, remember, at heart he was a good man, and had lived, up to this time, a noble and honourable life; and a certain terror must have fallen upon him when, two months later, his wife Quendreda died, and, sitting by his desolate hearth, he remembered the old story of the King of Israel who had done as he had done, and on whom the wrath of God had so speedily fallen.

It must have been almost a relief when one day Eadwulf, Bishop of Lichfield, came to him and said: ‘What is this that thou hast done? Killed a defenceless man in thine own Palace, and taken possession of his Kingdom. Hadst thou killed him in open battle, no one could have blamed thee, but to murder him in secret when he came as a friend was not worthy of thee, O King.’

‘I know it, I know it,’ replied Offa, who was now thoroughly sorry for his deed; ‘but it was the wine which I drank, which my wife gave to me. It inflamed my brain so that I knew not what I said.’

Now, at that time people had the idea that they could atone for any wicked act that they had done by giving money or lands to the Church, or going on some pilgrimage; so Eadwulf told King Offa that he thought that first of all he had better see that King Ethelbert’s body had Christian burial—you remember it had just been thrown into a hole—and that after that he must go a pilgrimage to Rome, and tell the Pope the whole story, and do whatever he told him to do as a punishment.

Then he added some words which were very solemn, but which turned out only too true. This was what he said: ‘Because thou hast repented of thy evil deed thy sin will be forgiven; nevertheless, the sword shall not depart from thine house. It was in thine heart that Mercia should be the greatest of English Kingdoms, and so it might have been. But now the glory shall depart from thee, and another King, even the King of Wessex, shall be greater in power and shall become the first King of the whole of England.’

Offa did as he was bid. He had the body of the young King taken from its rude grave, and buried in the little church of reeds and wattles at Fernlege, near which Ethelbert had sat and mused on the night before his death.

S. B. Bolas & Co.

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL: THE NAVE.

Then he went to Rome and told the whole story to the Pope, and said how penitent he was, and how gladly he would do anything in his power to atone for his sin; and the Pope, who wanted to have more churches built in England, told him to go home again, and show his sorrow by building a really fine church at St. Albans—where the first English martyr Alban laid down his life for the Faith—and another at Fernlege, where there was only the plain little Cathedral Church of wood.

Offa promised that he would do these things, and when he returned to England he gave orders that the two buildings should be begun without delay. Very soon afterwards he died, and it fell to the lot of one of his Viceroys, whose name was Milfred, to carry out his plans at Fernlege, and to build an ‘admirable stone church’ there.

And so King Offa vanishes from history, and although we cannot doubt that his penitence was very deep, and that his great sin was forgiven, it is very striking to read how Bishop Eadwulf’s words were fulfilled, and how the glory did indeed ‘depart from his house.’

We have seen how his wife died, and how his youngest and fairest daughter became a nun. Then he himself died and was buried, not in either of the two great Minsters which he had caused to be erected, but in a little chapel on the banks of the Ouse, near Bedford. One day a dreadful flood came, and the Ouse overflowed its banks and washed away the chapel, and King Offa’s bones along with it, and no one ever knew what became of them.

Soon afterwards his only son, Prince Ecgfrith, died, and slowly the Kingdom of Mercia grew less and less important, and the little Kingdom of Wessex grew greater and greater, until its King, King Ecgbert, great-grandfather of Alfred the Great, became ‘Overlord’ of the whole of England.

As for King Offa’s eldest daughter, Eadburh, her story is the saddest of all, for she was a wicked woman like her mother; and she did one bad thing after another, until at last she had neither money nor friends left; and the old chroniclers tell us that, ‘in the days of Alfred, who reigned over the West Saxons, and who was Overlord of all the Kingdoms of England, there were many men yet living who had seen Eadburh, daughter of Offa, and wife of Beorhtric, begging her bread.’

But it is pleasant to think that if Eadwulf’s words came true in such a terrible way, the dream or vision which poor King Ethelbert had on the last night of his life came true also, but in a much happier and sweeter manner.

For, as I have said, under the direction of Milfred, King Offa’s Viceroy, a noble stone church replaced the little wooden one at Fernlege, or, as it soon began to be called, ‘Hereford,’ which means ‘The Ford of the Army,’ because, when the Mercian soldiers wished to pass into Wales, they crossed the River Wye at this point.

This new church was dedicated to ‘St. Ethelbert and the Blessed Virgin,’ and into it, when it was finished, the Bishop’s chair was carried.

For, although the young King could not be called a martyr, he certainly left the record of a pure and brave and noble life behind him, and it seemed fitting—and we are glad that it did so—that the memory of his name should linger, all down the ages, round the stately Cathedral which was built as an expiation of his death, and in which, for half a century at least, his body rested.

It was not taken into the new Cathedral at once, however, which seems rather curious, but it was left for more than a hundred years in the grave in which it had been laid by Offa, before he went on his