"
"But Edwin--my brother Edwin! tell me of him!" cried Athelstane,
grasping the shoulder of the page.
"Did not his drowning cry reach thine ear, royal Athelstane?" asked
Wilfrid, bursting into tears. "Ere thy tall vessel had disappeared
from our sight the fair-haired Atheling was ingulfed in the stormy
billows that swelled round our frail bark, and I, only I, am, by the
especial mercy of God, preserved to tell thee the sad fate of thy
father's son, whom thou wert, in an evil hour, moved by a treacherous
villain to destroy."
"Traitor," said the king, turning to Brithric, "thy false tongue hath
not only slain my brother, but thyself! Thou shalt die for having
wickedly induced me to become his murderer!"
"And thou wilt live, O king, to suffer the pangs of an upbraiding
conscience," replied the culprit. "Where was thy wisdom, where thy
discrimination, where thy sense of justice, when thou lent so ready an
ear to my false and improbable accusations against thy boyish brother?
I sought my own aggrandizement--and to have achieved that I would have
destroyed thee and placed him upon the throne.
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