with it the over -- lordship of the whole empire, lay
beyond the reach of the hardly -- pressed ruler of
Denmark; it was claimed by another son of Cnut,
Harald, and itself fell asunder into two parts. A
tragic fate, too, awaited the house of Cnut. Be-
fore seven years were past the same weakness which
had cut short his own life had carried off his four
children, not one of them having reached twenty-
four years of age, and all childless save Gunhild, the
wife of the German, Henry III., whose only child
became a nun. The race of Gorm. in the direct line
of descent thus became extinct in little more than a
hundred years after he had finished his work of the
creation of the Danish kingdom.

-459-