"A greeting to you, Wulfric," said the bishop, "bold and trusty thegn of my king that I know you to be. What brings you into so sad a plight?" for the thegn lay on his bed and was evidently in great distress. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and his face was drawn with suffering.

"Think not of me," said the thegn. "Do not lose a moment. I fear that it is already too late. Osburga, the wife of our king, is dying. Take the prince to her. With that message am I sent."

"But what has come to the queen?" asked the bishop. "Is it the grief from the parting?"

"Yes," said the thegn. "She pined for the prince, and faded so rapidly that the king sent me to intercept you and give his command that you bring back the child to his mother."

"Where is your guard?" asked the bishop. "You are alone?"

"I came alone," answered the thegn. "My mother was one of the Franks. I know the language of the peoples through whose lands one must pass. I told the king that I could make my way faster if I was alone, that I knew footpaths and secret ways through the mountains where one man might go, but not an armed troop."

"And to bring a child to his mother, you have come alone where we scarcely ventured with a great guard of armed men?"

"It was the will of the king," said the thegn simply, "and all would have been well, had I not—and I was but a few miles from your road—if I had only not been taken by robbers, I should have met you; but that was many days ago. They held me for a ransom. I begged for only a few hours to meet you and give you my message, but they laughed me to scorn. I could not wait for the ransom; the king's business brooks no delay. I escaped. They caught me and tortured me and left me for dead. I made my way here, I know not how, and our own Saxons in Rome have cared for me most tenderly. I shall die, but tell my king that I was faithful to my trust."

The bishop's eyes were full. He bent low and kissed the thegn's hand.

"My bishop!" the suffering man gasped in protest.

"To-morrow I shall come to you again," said the bishop. "The prince cannot travel without rest. The king must not lose both wife and child."

Scarcely was the bishop again on the street when there was a great clattering of hoofs. He turned, and there was a company of riders with the familiar Saxon dress and weapons. The bishop's heart sank.

"If it was well with her," he thought, "there would be no message."

The foremost of the riders dismounted, bowed himself low before his bishop, and presented a bit of parchment in a strong leather case. It read:—

"Ethelwulf the king sends greeting to Swithin his bishop, and bids him know that Osburga, the wife of the king, is dead; and that it is the king's will that Alfred the prince tarry in Rome until the king come to him."

The bishop was a good man of business as well as a prelate, and it was but a short time before the prince was comfortably established for a longer stay than they had planned. Not until he had had many days of rest did the bishop give him the message from his father. Then very tenderly he told him that when he went home his mother would not be there to meet him.

"But I was going to carry her the prettiest gift in Rome," said he, his great blue eyes filling with tears, "and now she won't have it."

"You can pray for her," said the bishop, taking the child into his arms, "and that is better than any gift in all Rome."

"But I wanted to carry her something," said the little boy, and in spite of all the tender care and sympathy of the bishop and Wynfreda, the little Saxon prince was that night the saddest, loneliest child in Rome.

The Saxons were nominally guests of the Pope, Leo IV, and very soon came the first interview with him. Leo was much pleased with the little boy who quietly did just what he was told to in the formal ceremony of his reception; and he was far more pleased when the child, after a long look straight into his eyes, came up to him fearlessly and laid his little hand in that of Pope.

"That is a child with the soul of a prince," said the Pope. "Some day he will be a king, it needs no prophet to foretell that there will turbulent days in that stormy, harassed land of the Saxons. Perhaps he will not wear his crown until long after I am gone, but no hand save mine shall anoint him with the holy oil." And so holy oil was brought, for Leo was not a man of delays and postponements, and the child was anointed and blessed. Then the Pope said, touching the jewel that hung at Alfred's throat:—

"And what is this? Is it a relic?"

"It is my Saint Cuthbert," said the boy. "My mother gave it to me, and I was going to carry her the prettiest thing in all Rome; but now I can't, because she is dead." The Pope laid his hand tenderly on the child's head.

"The Saxon prince comes nearer to my heart than any other child has ever done," he said. "He has his sponsors in baptism, but he shall have one more. I hereby adopt him as my own spiritual son. I give him the blessing of the Father of the Church, and I give him the kiss of the tired old warrior whose heart he has warmed with his childish trust," and the Pope bent down and kissed the boy gently on the forehead.

Very little of this speech had Alfred understood, for it had all been in Latin, but he had many questions to ask about it, and Bishop Swithin tried to make him comprehend the meaning of the ceremony. The next morning he asked to be taken again to see "my Pope," as he persisted in calling the warrior pontiff, but a council of bishops was to be held in Rome, and it was quite a long time before the Pope could be free to see his little friend.

Month after month passed on, and Ethelwulf did not come. He had hoped to start at once, but one trouble after another in his kingdom prevented him from leaving it. Meanwhile there was much to see in this great city of Rome, the very centre of art and learning, and the months passed swiftly. Soon after their arrival, Alfred had noticed some men heavily chained who were working on the rebuilding of the fortifications.

"My father's men do not wear chains," he said. "Why do these men?"

The bishop explained to him that just as the Danes troubled England, so the Saracens, a people who lived across the sea, had troubled Rome.

"They tore down the holy churches of Saint Peter and Saint Paul," he said, "and robbed them. The sacred pictures they ran through with their knives. The precious stones were torn from the altar, and the golden images and consecrated dishes were carried away to serve in the land of the heathen."

"When the Danes came, my father and Ethelbald fought them and drove them away," said Alfred. "Why didn't my Pope drive them away?"

"He was not Pope then," said the bishop, "but just as soon as he became Pope, and knew that they were coming again, he built those two great towers that you can see from the window, one on each bank of the Tiber, and he stretched a heavy iron chain between them, so that the fleet of the heathen Saracens could not come up the river. Then he repaired the walls and put up new watch-towers. Before long the Saracen fleet came, and the Pope's fleet went out to meet them, and there was a great fight."

"We didn't fight when we saw the Danes," said Alfred.

"No," said the bishop. "We had prayed to God, and He had sent the little worms of the sea to aid us. The Pope's people, too, had prayed, and while they were fighting, a strong wind arose, and the boats of the heathen were separated. Some of them were dashed on the rocks, and all the men were drowned; and some of the men in the other boats were cast away on little islands where there was nothing to eat, and they starved to death; and many were driven on this coast and were taken prisoners, and they are the men whom you saw in chains. They tried to overthrow the Holy City, and now it is their strength that is being used to rebuild it and to fortify it so that no one shall ever be able to come against it again."

"Is it where the high walls are that they are building?" asked Alfred.

"Yes," said the bishop, "in the Vatican quarter. They call it the Leonine City, because the name of your Pope is Leo. He has consecrated it to heaven so that no wicked Saracens can ever prevail against it. A little while before we came, he walked around the wall with many bishops and all the Roman clergy, and sprinkled it with holy water. They were barefooted and had ashes on their heads. At each of the three gates they stopped and prayed that heaven would bless the city, and save it from the heathen men who hated it. Then, because they wished everybody in Rome to be as happy as they were, they gave away great sums of money to the people that were there. To-morrow you shall go again to see the new church of Saint Peter that is within the high walls."