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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Last Of The Barons, by Lytton, Volume 10.
+#151 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+
+Title: The Last Of The Barons, Volume 10.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7724]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 6, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST OF THE BARONS, V10 ***
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+THE RETURN OF THE KING-MAKER.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE MAID'S HOPE, THE COURTIER'S LOVE, AND THE SAGE'S COMFORT.
+
+Fair are thy fields, O England; fair the rural farm and the orchards
+in which the blossoms have ripened into laughing fruits; and fairer
+than all, O England, the faces of thy soft-eyed daughters!
+
+From the field where Sibyll and her father had wandered amidst the
+dead, the dismal witnesses of war had vanished; and over the green
+pastures roved the gentle flocks.  And the farm to which Hastings had
+led the wanderers looked upon that peaceful field through its leafy
+screen; and there father and daughter had found a home.
+
+It was a lovely summer evening; and Sibyll put aside the broidery
+frame, at which, for the last hour, she had not worked, and gliding to
+the lattice, looked wistfully along the winding lane.  The room was in
+the upper story, and was decorated with a care which the exterior of
+the house little promised, and which almost approached to elegance.
+The fresh green rushes that strewed the floor were intermingled with
+dried wild thyme and other fragrant herbs.  The bare walls were hung
+with serge of a bright and cheerful blue; a rich carpet de cuir
+covered the oak table, on which lay musical instruments, curiously
+inlaid, with a few manuscripts, chiefly of English and Provencal
+poetry.  The tabourets were covered with cushions of Norwich worsted,
+in gay colours.  All was simple, it is true, yet all betokened a
+comfort--ay, a refinement, an evidence of wealth--very rare in the
+houses even of the second order of nobility.
+
+As Sibyll gazed, her face suddenly brightened; she uttered a joyous
+cry, hurried from the room, descended the stairs, and passed her
+father, who was seated without the porch, and seemingly plunged in one
+of his most abstracted reveries.  She kissed his brow (he heeded her
+not), bounded with a light step over the sward of the orchard, and
+pausing by a wicket gate, listened with throbbing heart to the
+advancing sound of a horse's hoofs.  Nearer came the sound, and
+nearer.  A cavalier appeared in sight, sprang from his saddle, and,
+leaving his palfrey to find his way to the well-known stable, sprang
+lightly over the little gate.
+
+"And thou hast watched for me, Sibyll?"
+
+The girl blushingly withdrew from the eager embrace, and said
+touchingly, "My heart watcheth for thee alway.  Oh, shall I thank or
+chide thee for so much care?  Thou wilt see how thy craftsmen have
+changed the rugged homestead into the daintiest bower!"
+
+"Alas! my Sibyll! would that it were worthier of thy beauty, and our
+mutual troth!  Blessings on thy trust and sweet patience; may the day
+soon come when I may lead thee to a nobler home, and hear knight and
+baron envy the bride of Hastings!"
+
+"My own lord!" said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes;
+but, after a pause, she added timidly, "Does the king still bear so
+stern a memory against so humble a subject?"
+
+"The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick's
+restless machinations in France have soured his temper.  He cannot
+hear thy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent
+of Lancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,--as, in
+truth, thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the
+influence of Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our
+good swords, she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the
+dispersion of our foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet
+feeds Edward's suspicions of thy harmless father.  The king chides
+himself for having suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even
+recalls the disastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that
+from the first thy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret.
+Nay, sure I am, that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he
+would condemn thee as a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate
+of my old foes the Woodvilles.  But fie! be not so appalled, my
+Sibyll; Edward's passions, though fierce, are changeful, and patience
+will reward us both."
+
+"Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!" said Sibyll, with great
+emotion.  "Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence!
+I see thee surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to
+myself, 'Is it possible that he can remember me?'  But thou lovest me
+still--still--still, and ever!  Dost thou not?"
+
+And Hastings said and swore.
+
+"And the Lady Bonville?" asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but
+with the faltering tone of jealous fear.
+
+"I have not seen her for months," replied the noble, with a slight
+change of countenance.  "She is at one of their western manors.  They
+say her lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout
+hypocrite, and plays the tender wife.  But enough of such ancient and
+worn-out memories.  Thy father--sorrows he still for his Eureka?  I
+can learn no trace of it."
+
+"See," said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to
+Warner as they now drew near the house, "see, he shapes another Eureka
+from his thoughts!"
+
+"How fares it, dear Warner?" asked the noble, taking the scholar's
+hand.
+
+"Ah," cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerful
+protector, "bringest thou tidings of IT?  Thy cheerful eye tells me
+that--no--no--thy face changes!  They have destroyed it!  Oh, that I
+could be young once more!"
+
+"What!" said the world-wise man, astonished.  "If thou hadst another
+youth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through a
+life of hardship, persecution, and wrong?"
+
+"My noble son," said the philosopher, "for hours when I have felt the
+wrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the
+nights when I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy!  God is
+kinder to us all than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow
+on the surface, and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the
+unwitnessed soul."
+
+Sibyll had left Hastings by her father's side, and tripped lightly to
+the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners who
+supplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,--the happy
+banquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst
+such sparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.
+
+And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under the
+honeysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over his
+sated mind.  The pure soul of the student, released a while from the
+tyranny of an earthly pursuit,--the drudgery of a toil, that however
+grand, still but ministered to human and material science,--had found
+for its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and
+eternal mysteries.  Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden
+cage, into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and
+spiritual eloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made
+familiar to his thoughts.  Mounting from philosophy to religion, he
+indulged in his large ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that
+now came forth in heaven; of the laws that gave harmony to the
+universe; of the evidence of a God in the mechanism of creation; of
+the spark from central divinity, that, kindling in a man's soul, we
+call "genius;" of the eternal resurrection of the dead, which makes
+the very principle of being, and types, in the leaf and in the atom,
+the immortality of the great human race.  He was sublimer, that gray
+old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his words, than ever
+is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and deeds but
+blunderingly and lamely seek it.
+
+And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from its
+little ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked, "What
+can courts and a king's smile give me in exchange for serene
+tranquillity and devoted love?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE MAN AWAKES IN THE SAGE, AND THE SHE-WOLF AGAIN HATH TRACKED THE
+LAMB.
+
+From the night in which Hastings had saved from the knives of the
+tymbesteres Sibyll and her father, his honour and chivalry had made
+him their protector.  The people of the farm (a widow and her
+children, with the peasants in their employ) were kindly and simple
+folks.  What safer home for the wanderers than that to which Hastings
+had removed them?  The influence of Sibyll over his variable heart or
+fancy was renewed.  Again vows were interchanged and faith plighted.
+Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who, however gallant an enemy, was
+still more than ever, since Warwick's exile, a formidable one, and who
+shared his sister's dislike to Hastings, was naturally at that time in
+the fullest favour of King Edward, anxious to atone for the brief
+disgrace his brother-in-law had suffered during the later days of
+Warwick's administration.  And Hastings, offended by the manners of
+the rival favourite, took one of the disgusts so frequent in the life
+of a courtier, and, despite his office of chamberlain, absented
+himself much from his sovereign's company.  Thus, in the reaction of
+his mind, the influence of Sibyll was greater than it otherwise might
+have been.  His visits to the farm were regular and frequent.  The
+widow believed him nearly related to Sibyll, and suspected Warner to
+be some attainted Lancastrian, compelled to hide in secret till his
+pardon was obtained; and no scandal was attached to the noble's
+visits, nor any surprise evinced at his attentive care for all that
+could lend a grace to a temporary refuge unfitting the quality of his
+supposed kindred.
+
+And, in her entire confidence and reverential affection, Sibyll's very
+pride was rather soothed than wounded by obligations which were but
+proofs of love, and to which plighted troth gave her a sweet right.
+As for Warner, he had hitherto seemed to regard the great lord's
+attentions only as a tribute to his own science, and a testimony of
+the interest which a statesman might naturally feel in the invention
+of a thing that might benefit the realm.  And Hastings had been
+delicate in the pretexts of his visits.  One time he called to relate
+the death of poor Madge, though he kindly concealed the manner of it,
+which he had discovered, but which opinion, if not law, forbade him to
+attempt to punish: drowning was but the orthodox ordeal of a suspected
+witch, and it was not without many scruples that the poor woman was
+interred in holy ground.  The search for the Eureka was a pretence
+that sufficed for countless visits; and then, too, Hastings had
+counselled Adam to sell the ruined house, and undertaken the
+negotiation; and the new comforts of their present residence, and the
+expense of the maintenance, were laid to the account of the sale.
+Hastings had begun to consider Adam Warner as utterly blind and
+passive to the things that passed under his eyes; and his astonishment
+was great when, the morning after the visit we have just recorded,
+Adam, suddenly lifting his eyes, and seeing the guest whispering soft
+tales in Sibyll's ear, rose abruptly, approached the nobleman, took
+him gently by the arm, led him into the garden, and thus addressed
+him,--
+
+"Noble lord, you have been tender and generous in our misfortunes.
+The poor Eureka is lost to me and the world forever.  God's will be
+done!  Methinks Heaven designs thereby to rouse me to the sense of
+nearer duties; and I have a daughter whose name I adjure you not to
+sully, and whose heart I pray you not to break.  Come hither no more,
+my Lord Hastings."
+
+This speech, almost the only one which showed plain sense and judgment
+in the affairs of this life that the man of genius had ever uttered,
+so confounded Hastings, that he with difficulty recovered himself
+enough to say,--
+
+"My poor scholar, what hath so suddenly kindled suspicions which wrong
+thy child and me?"
+
+"Last eve, when we sat together, I saw your hand steal into hers, and
+suddenly I remembered the day when I was young, and wooed her mother!
+And last night I slept not, and sense and memory became active for my
+living child, as they were wont to be only for the iron infant of my
+mind, and I said to myself, 'Lord Hastings is King Edward's friend;
+and King Edward spares not maiden honour.  Lord Hastings is a mighty
+peer, and he will not wed the dowerless and worse than nameless girl!'
+Be merciful!  Depart, depart!"
+
+"But," exclaimed Hastings, "if I love thy sweet Sibyll in all honesty,
+if I have plighted to her my troth--"
+
+"Alas, alas!" groaned Adam.
+
+"If I wait but my king's permission to demand her wedded hand, couldst
+thou forbid me the presence of my affianced?"
+
+"She loves thee, then?" said Adam, in a tone of great anguish,--"she
+loves thee,--speak!"
+
+"It is my pride to think it."
+
+"Then go,--go at once; come back no more till thou hast wound up thy
+courage to brave the sacrifice; no, not till the priest is ready at
+the altar, not till the bridegroom can claim the bride.  And as that
+time will never come--never--never--leave me to whisper to the
+breaking heart, 'Courage; honour and virtue are left thee yet, and thy
+mother from heaven looks down on a stainless child!'"
+
+The resuscitation of the dead could scarcely have startled and awed
+the courtier more than this abrupt development of life and passion and
+energy in a man who had hitherto seemed to sleep in the folds of his
+thought, as a chrysalis in its web.  But as we have always seen that
+ever, when this strange being woke from his ideal abstraction, he
+awoke to honour and courage and truth, so now, whether, as he had
+said, the absence of the Eureka left his mind to the sense of
+practical duties, or whether their common suffering had more endeared
+to him his gentle companion, and affection sharpened reason, Adam
+Warner became puissant and majestic in his rights and sanctity of
+father,--greater in his homely household character, than when, in his
+mania of inventor, and the sublime hunger of aspiring genius, he had
+stolen to his daughter's couch, and waked her with the cry of "Gold!"
+
+Before the force and power of Adam's adjuration, his outstretched
+hand, the anguish, yet authority, written on his face, all the art and
+self-possession of the accomplished lover deserted him, as one spell-
+bound.
+
+He was literally without reply; till, suddenly, the sight of Sibyll,
+who, surprised by this singular conference, but unsuspecting its
+nature, now came from the house, relieved and nerved him; and his
+first impulse was then, as ever, worthy and noble, such as showed,
+though dimly, how glorious a creature he had been, if cast in a time
+and amidst a race which could have fostered the impulse into habit.
+
+"Brave old man!" he said, kissing the hand still raised in command,
+"thou hast spoken as beseems thee; and my answer I will tell thy
+child."  Then hurrying to the wondering Sibyll, he resumed: "Your
+father says well, that not thus, dubious and in secret, should I visit
+the home blest by thy beloved presence.  I obey; I leave thee, Sibyll.
+I go to my king, as one who hath served him long and truly, and claims
+his guerdon,--thee!"
+
+"Oh, my lord!" exclaimed Sibyll, in generous terror, "bethink thee
+well; remember what thou saidst but last eve.  This king so fierce, my
+name so hated!  No, no! leave me.  Farewell forever, if it be right,
+as what thou and my father say must be.  But thy life, thy liberty,
+thy welfare,--they are my happiness; thou hast no right to endanger
+them!"  And she fell at his knees.  He raised and strained her to his
+heart; then resigning her to her father's arms, he said in a voice
+choked with emotion,--
+
+"Not as peer and as knight, but as man, I claim my prerogative of home
+and hearth.  Let Edward frown, call back his gifts, banish me his
+court,--thou art more worth than all!  Look for me, sigh not, weep
+not, smile till we meet again!"  He left them with these words,
+hastened to the stall where his steed stood, caparisoned it with his
+own hands, and rode with the speed of one whom passion spurs and goads
+towards the Tower of London.
+
+But as Sibyll started from her father's arms, when she heard the
+departing hoofs of her lover's steed,--to listen and to listen for the
+last sound that told of him,--a terrible apparition, ever ominous of
+woe and horror, met her eye.  On the other side of the orchard fence,
+which concealed her figure, but not her well-known face, which peered
+above, stood the tymbestere, Graul.  A shriek of terror at this
+recognition burst from Sibyll, as she threw herself again upon Adam's
+breast; but when he looked round to discover the cause of her alarm,
+Graul was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+VIRTUOUS RESOLVES SUBMITTED TO THE TEST OF VANITY AND THE WORLD.
+
+On reaching his own house, Hastings learned that the court was still
+at Shene.  He waited but till the retinue which his rank required were
+equipped and ready, and reached the court, from which of late he had
+found so many excuses to absent himself, before night.  Edward was
+then at the banquet, and Hastings was too experienced a courtier to
+disturb him at such a time.  In a mood unfit for companionship, he
+took his way to the apartments usually reserved for him, when a
+gentleman met him by the way, and apprised him, with great respect,
+that the Lord Scales and Rivers had already appropriated those
+apartments to the principal waiting-lady of his countess,--but that
+other chambers, if less commodious and spacious, were at his command.
+
+Hastings had not the superb and more than regal pride of Warwick and
+Montagu; but this notice sensibly piqued and galled him.
+
+"My apartments as Lord Chamberlain, as one of the captain-generals in
+the king's army, given to the waiting-lady of Sir Anthony Woodville's
+wife!  At whose orders, sir?"
+
+"Her highness the queen's; pardon me, my lord," and the gentleman,
+looking round, and sinking his voice, continued, "pardon me, her
+highness added, 'If my Lord Chamberlain returns not ere the week ends,
+he may find not only the apartment, but the office, no longer free.'
+My lord, we all love you--forgive my zeal, and look well if you would
+guard your own."
+
+"Thanks, sir.  Is my lord of Gloucester in the palace?"
+
+"He is,--and in his chamber.  He sits not long at the feast."
+
+"Oblige me by craving his grace's permission to wait on him at
+leisure; I attend his answer here."
+
+Leaning against the wall of the corridor, Hastings gave himself up to
+other thoughts than those of love.  So strong is habit, so powerful
+vanity or ambition, once indulged, that this puny slight made a sudden
+revulsion in the mind of the royal favourite; once more the agitated
+and brilliant court life stirred and fevered him,--that life, so
+wearisome when secure, became sweeter when imperilled.  To counteract
+his foes, to humble his rivals, to regain the king's countenance, to
+baffle, with the easy art of his skilful intellect, every hostile
+stratagem,--such were the ideas that crossed and hurtled themselves,
+and Sibyll was forgotten.
+
+The gentleman reappeared.  "Prince Richard besought my lord's presence
+with loving welcome;" and to the duke's apartment went Lord Hastings.
+Richard, clad in a loose chamber robe, which concealed the defects of
+his shape, rose from before a table covered with papers, and embraced
+Hastings with cordial affection.
+
+"Never more gladly hail to thee, dear William.  I need thy wise
+counsels with the king, and I have glad tidings for thine own ear."
+
+"Pardieu, my prince; the king, methinks, will scarce heed the counsels
+of a dead man."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Ay.  At court it seems men are dead,--their rooms filled, their
+places promised or bestowed,--if they come not, morn and night, to
+convince the king that they are alive."  And Hastings, with
+constrained gayety, repeated the information he had received.
+
+"What would you, Hastings?" said the duke, shrugging his shoulders,
+but with some latent meaning in his tone.  "Lord Rivers were nought in
+himself; but his lady is a mighty heiress, [Elizabeth secured to her
+brother, Sir Anthony, the greatest heiress in the kingdom, in the
+daughter of Lord Scales,--a wife, by the way, who is said to have been
+a mere child at the time of the marriage.] and requires state, as she
+bestows pomp.  Look round, and tell me what man ever maintained
+himself in power without the strong connections, the convenient dower,
+the acute, unseen, unsleeping woman-influence of some noble wife?  How
+can a poor man defend his repute, his popular name, that airy but all
+puissant thing we call dignity or station, against the pricks and
+stings of female intrigue and female gossip?  But he marries, and, lo,
+a host of fairy champions, who pinch the rival lozels unawares: his
+wife hath her army of courtpie and jupon, to array against the dames
+of his foes!  Wherefore, my friend, while thou art unwedded, think not
+to cope with Lord Rivers, who hath a wife with three sisters, two
+aunts, and a score of she-cousins!"
+
+"And if," replied Hastings, more and more unquiet under the duke's
+truthful irony,--"if I were now to come to ask the king permission to
+wed--"
+
+"If thou wert, and the bride-elect were a lady with power and wealth
+and manifold connections, and the practice of a court, thou wouldst be
+the mightiest lord in the kingdom since Warwick's exile."
+
+"And if she had but youth, beauty, and virtue?"
+
+"Oh, then, my Lord Hastings, pray thy patron saint for a war,--for in
+peace thou wouldst be lost amongst the crowd.  But truce to these
+jests; for thou art not the man to prate of youth, virtue, and such
+like, in sober earnest, amidst this work-day world, where nothing is
+young and nothing virtuous;--and listen to grave matters."
+
+The duke then communicated to Hastings the last tidings received of
+the machinations of Warwick.  He was in high spirits; for those last
+tidings but reported Margaret's refusal to entertain the proposition
+of a nuptial alliance with the earl, though, on the other hand, the
+Duke of Burgundy, who was in constant correspondence with his spies,
+wrote word that Warwick was collecting provisions, from his own means,
+for more than sixty thousand men; and that, with Lancaster or without,
+the earl was prepared to match his own family interest against the
+armies of Edward.
+
+"And," said Hastings, "if all his family joined with him, what foreign
+king could be so formidable an invader?  Maltravers and the Mowbrays,
+Fauconberg, Westmoreland, Fitzhugh, Stanley, Bonville, Worcester--"
+
+"But happily," said Gloucester, "the Mowbrays have been allied also to
+the queen's sister; Worcester detests Warwick; Stanley always murmurs
+against us, a sure sign that he will fight for us; and Bonville--I
+have in view a trusty Yorkist to whom the retainers of that House
+shall be assigned.  But of that anon.  What I now wish from thy wisdom
+is, to aid me in rousing Edward from his lethargy; he laughs at his
+danger, and neither communicates with his captains nor mans his
+coasts.  His courage makes him a dullard."
+
+After some further talk on these heads, and more detailed account of
+the preparations which Gloucester deemed necessary to urge on the
+king, the duke, then moving his chair nearer to Hastings, said with a
+smile,--
+
+"And now, Hastings, to thyself: it seems that thou hast not heard the
+news which reached us four days since.  The Lord Bonville is dead,--
+died three months ago at his manor house in Devon.  [To those who have
+read the "Paston Letters" it will not seem strange that in that day
+the death of a nobleman at his country seat should be so long in
+reaching the metropolis,--the ordinary purveyors of communication were
+the itinerant attendants of fairs; and a father might be ignorant for
+months together of the death of his son.]  Thy Katherine is free, and
+in London.  Well, man, where is thy joy?"
+
+"Time is, time was!" said Hastings, gloomily.  "The day has passed
+when this news could rejoice me."
+
+"Passed! nay, thy good stars themselves have fought for thee in delay.
+Seven goodly manors swell the fair widow's jointure; the noble dowry
+she brought returns to her.  Her very daughter will bring thee power.
+Young Cecily Bonville [afterwards married to Dorset], the heiress,
+Lord Dorset demands in betrothal.  Thy wife will be mother-in-law to
+thy queen's son; on the other hand, she is already aunt to the Duchess
+of Clarence; and George, be sure, sooner or later, will desert
+Warwick, and win his pardon.  Powerful connections, vast possessions,
+a lady of immaculate name and surpassing beauty, and thy first love!--
+(thy hand trembles!)--thy first love, thy sole love, and thy last!"
+
+"Prince--Prince! forbear!  Even if so--In brief, Katherine loves me
+not!"
+
+"Thou mistakest!  I have seen her, and she loves thee not the less
+because her virtue so long concealed the love."  Hastings uttered an
+exclamation of passionate joy, but again his face darkened.
+
+Gloucester watched him in silence; besides any motive suggested by the
+affection he then sincerely bore to Hastings, policy might well
+interest the duke in the securing to so loyal a Yorkist the hand and
+the wealth of Lord Warwick's sister; but, prudently not pressing the
+subject further, he said, in an altered and careless voice, "Pardon me
+if I have presumed on matters on which each man judges for himself.
+But as, despite all obstacle, one day or other Anne Nevile shall be
+mine, it would have delighted me to know a near connection in Lord
+Hastings.  And now the hour grows late, I prithee let Edward find thee
+in his chamber."
+
+When Hastings attended the king, he at once perceived that Edward's
+manner was changed to him.  At first, he attributed the cause to the
+ill offices of the queen and her brother; but the king soon betrayed
+the true source of his altered humour.
+
+"My lord," he said abruptly, "I am no saint, as thou knowest; but
+there are some ties, par amour, which, in my mind, become not knights
+and nobles about a king's person."
+
+"My liege, I arede you not."
+
+"Tush, William!" replied the king, more gently, "thou hast more than
+once wearied me with application for the pardon of the nigromancer
+Warner,--the whole court is scandalized at thy love for his daughter.
+Thou hast absented thyself from thine office on poor pretexts!  I know
+thee too well not to be aware that love alone can make thee neglect
+thy king,--thy time has been spent at the knees or in the arms of this
+young sorceress!  One word for all times,--he whom a witch snares
+cannot be a king's true servant!  I ask of thee as a right, or as a
+grace, see this fair ribaude no more!  What, man, are there not ladies
+enough in merry England, that thou shouldst undo thyself for so
+unchristian a fere?"
+
+"My king! how can this poor maid have angered thee thus?"
+
+"Knowest thou not"--began the king, sharply, and changing colour as he
+eyed his favourite's mournful astonishment,--"ah, well!" he muttered
+to himself, "they have been discreet hitherto, but how long will they
+be so?  I am in time yet.  It is enough,"--he added, aloud and
+gravely--"it is enough that our learned [it will be remembered that
+Edward himself was a man of no learning] Bungey holds her father as a
+most pestilent wizard, whose spells are muttered for Lancaster and the
+rebel Warwick; that the girl hath her father's unholy gifts, and I lay
+my command on thee, as liege king, and I pray thee, as loving friend,
+to see no more either child or sire!  Let this suffice--and now I will
+hear thee on state matters."
+
+Whatever Hastings might feel, he saw that it was no time to venture
+remonstrance with the king, and strove to collect his thoughts, and
+speak indifferently on the high interests to which Edward invited him;
+but he was so distracted and absent that he made but a sorry
+counsellor, and the king, taking pity on him, dismissed his
+chamberlain for the night.
+
+Sleep came not to the couch of Hastings; his acuteness perceived that
+whatever Edward's superstition, and he was a devout believer in
+witchcraft, some more worldly motive actuated him in his resentment to
+poor Sibyll.  But as we need scarcely say that neither from the
+abstracted Warner nor his innocent daughter had Hastings learned the
+true cause, he wearied himself with vain conjectures, and knew not
+that Edward involuntarily did homage to the superior chivalry of his
+gallant favourite, when he dreaded that, above all men, Hastings
+should be made aware of the guilty secret which the philosopher and
+his child could tell.  If Hastings gave his name and rank to Sibyll,
+how powerful a weight would the tale of a witness now so obscure
+suddenly acquire!
+
+Turning from the image of Sibyll, thus beset with thoughts of danger,
+embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, ruin, Lord Hastings recalled the
+words of Gloucester; and the stately image of Katherine, surrounded
+with every memory of early passion, every attribute of present
+ambition, rose before him; and he slept at last, to dream not of
+Sibyll and the humble orchard, but of Katherine in her maiden bloom,
+of the trysting-tree by the halls of Middleham, of the broken ring, of
+the rapture and the woe of his youth's first high-placed love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE STRIFE WHICH SIBYLL HAD COURTED, BETWEEN KATHERINE AND HERSELF,
+COMMENCES IN SERIOUS EARNEST.
+
+Hastings felt relieved when, the next day, several couriers arrived
+with tidings so important as to merge all considerations into those of
+state.  A secret messenger from the French court threw Gloucester into
+one of those convulsive passions of rage, to which, with all his
+intellect and dissimulation, he was sometimes subject, by the news of
+Anne's betrothal to Prince Edward; nor did the letter from Clarence to
+the king, attesting the success of one of his schemes, comfort Richard
+for the failure of the other.  A letter from Burgundy confirmed the
+report of the spy, announced Duke Charles's intention of sending a
+fleet to prevent Warwick's invasion, and rated King Edward sharply for
+his supineness in not preparing suitably against so formidable a foe.
+The gay and reckless presumption of Edward, worthier of a knight-
+errant than a monarch, laughed at the word invasion.  "Pest on
+Burgundy's ships!  I only wish that the earl would land!" [Com, iii.
+c. 5] he said to his council.  None echoed the wish!  But later in the
+day came a third messenger with information that roused all Edward's
+ire; careless of each danger in the distance, he ever sprang into
+energy and vengeance when a foe was already in the field.  And the
+Lord Fitzhugh (the young nobleman before seen among the rebels at
+Olney, and who had now succeeded to the honours of his House) had
+suddenly risen in the North, at the head of a formidable rebellion.
+No man had so large an experience in the warfare of those districts,
+the temper of the people, and the inclinations of the various towns
+and lordships as Montagu; he was the natural chief to depute against
+the rebels.  Some animated discussion took place as to the dependence
+to be placed in the marquis at such a crisis; but while the more wary
+held it safer, at all hazards, not to leave him unemployed, and to
+command his services in an expedition that would remove him from the
+neighbourhood of his brother, should the latter land, as was expected,
+on the coast of Norfolk, Edward, with a blindness of conceit that
+seems almost incredible, believed firmly in the infatuated loyalty of
+the man whom he had slighted and impoverished, and whom, by his offer
+of his daughter to the Lancastrian prince, he had yet more recently
+cozened and deluded.  Montagu was hastily summoned, and received
+orders to march at once to the North, levy forces, and assume their
+command.  The marquis obeyed with fewer words than were natural to
+him, left the presence, sprang on his horse, and as he rode from the
+palace, drew a letter from his bosom.  "Ah, Edward," said he, setting
+his teeth, "so, after the solemn betrothal of thy daughter to my son,
+thou wouldst have given her to thy Lancastrian enemy.  Coward, to
+bribe his peace! recreant, to belie thy word!  I thank thee for this
+news, Warwick; for without that injury I feel I could never, when the
+hour came, have drawn sword against this faithless man,--especially
+for Lancaster.  Ay, tremble, thou who deridest all truth and honour!
+He who himself betrays, cannot call vengeance treason!"
+
+Meanwhile, Edward departed, for further preparations, to the Tower of
+London.  New evidences of the mine beneath his feet here awaited the
+incredulous king.  On the door of St. Paul's, of many of the
+metropolitan churches, on the Standard at Chepe, and on London Bridge,
+during the past night, had been affixed, none knew by whom, the
+celebrated proclamation, signed by Warwick and Clarence (drawn up in
+the bold style of the earl), announcing their speedy return,
+containing a brief and vigorous description of the misrule of the
+realm, and their determination to reform all evils and redress all
+wrongs.  [See, for this proclamation, Ellis's "Original Letters," vol.
+i., second series, letter 42.]  Though the proclamation named not the
+restoration of the Lancastrian line (doubtless from regard for Henry's
+safety), all men in the metropolis were already aware of the
+formidable league between Margaret and Warwick.  Yet, even still,
+Edward smiled in contempt, for he had faith in the letter received
+from Clarence, and felt assured that the moment the duke and the earl
+landed, the former would betray his companion stealthily to the king;
+so, despite all these exciting subjects of grave alarm, the nightly
+banquet at the Tower was never merrier and more joyous.  Hastings left
+the feast ere it deepened into revel, and, absorbed in various and
+profound contemplation, entered his apartment.  He threw himself on a
+seat, and leaned his face on his hands.
+
+"Oh, no, no!" he muttered; "now, in the hour when true greatness is
+most seen, when prince and peer crowd around me for counsel, when
+noble, knight, and squire crave permission to march in the troop of
+which Hastings is the leader,--now I feel how impossible, how falsely
+fair, the dream that I could forget all--all for a life of obscurity,
+for a young girl's love!  Love! as if I had not felt its delusions to
+palling! love, as if I could love again: or, if love--alas, it must be
+a light reflected but from memory!  And Katherine is free once more!"
+His eye fell as he spoke, perhaps in shame and remorse that, feeling
+thus now, he had felt so differently when he bade Sibyll smile till
+his return!
+
+"It is the air of this accursed court which taints our best resolves!"
+he murmured, as an apology for himself; but scarcely was the poor
+excuse made, than the murmur broke into an exclamation of surprise and
+joy.  A letter lay before him; he recognized the hand of Katherine.
+What years had passed since her writing had met his eye, since the
+lines that bade him "farewell, and forget!"  Those lines had been
+blotted with tears, and these, as he tore open the silk that bound
+them--these, the trace of tears, too, was on them!  Yet they were but
+few, and in tremulous characters.  They ran thus:--
+
+To-morrow, before noon, the Lord Hastings is prayed to visit one whose
+life he hath saddened by the thought and the accusation that she hath
+clouded and embittered his.               KATHERINE DE BONVILLE.
+
+Leaving Hastings to such meditations of fear or of hope as these lines
+could call forth, we lead the reader to a room not very distant from
+his own,--the room of the illustrious Friar Bungey.
+
+The ex-tregetour was standing before the captured Eureka, and gazing
+on it with an air of serio-comic despair and rage.  We say the Eureka,
+as comprising all the ingenious contrivances towards one single object
+invented by its maker, a harmonious compound of many separate details;
+but the iron creature no longer deserved that superb appellation, for
+its various members were now disjointed and dislocated, and lay pell-
+mell in multiform confusion.
+
+By the side of the friar stood a female, enveloped in a long scarlet
+mantle, with the hood partially drawn over the face, but still leaving
+visible the hard, thin, villanous lips, the stern, sharp chin, and the
+jaw resolute and solid as if hewed from stone.
+
+"I tell thee, Graul," said the friar, "that thou hast had far the best
+of the bargain.  I have put this diabolical contrivance to all manner
+of shapes, and have muttered over it enough Latin to have charmed a
+monster into civility.  And the accursed thing, after nearly pinching
+off three fingers, and scalding me with seething water, and
+spluttering and sputtering enough to have terrified any man but Friar
+Bungey out of his skin, is obstinatus ut mulum,--dogged as a mule; and
+was absolutely good for nought, till I happily thought of separating
+this vessel from all the rest of the gear, and it serves now for the
+boiling my eggs!  But by the soul of Father Merlin, whom the saints
+assoil, I need not have given myself all this torment for a thing
+which, at best, does the work of a farthing pipkin!"
+
+"Quick, master; the hour is late!  I must go while yet the troopers
+and couriers and riders, hurrying to and fro, keep the gates from
+closing.  What wantest thou with Graul?"
+
+"More reverence, child!" growled the friar.  "What I want of thee is
+briefly told, if thou hast the wit to serve me.  This miserable Warner
+must himself expound to me the uses and trick of his malignant
+contrivance.  Thou must find and bring him hither!"
+
+"And if he will not expound?"
+
+"The deputy governor of the Tower will lend me a stone dungeon, and,
+if need be, the use of the brake to unlock the dotard's tongue."
+
+"On what plea?"
+
+"That Adam Warner is a wizard, in the pay of Lord Warwick, whom a more
+mighty master like myself alone can duly examine and defeat."
+
+"And if I bring thee the sorcerer, what wilt thou teach me in return?"
+
+"What desirest thou most?"
+
+Graul mused, and said, "There is war in the wind.  Graul follows the
+camp, her trooper gets gold and booty.  But the trooper is stronger
+than Graul; and when the trooper sleeps it is with his knife by his
+side, and his sleep is light and broken, for he has wicked dreams.
+Give me a potion to make sleep deep, that his eyes may not open when
+Graul filches his gold, and his hand may be too heavy to draw the
+knife from its sheath!"
+
+"Immunda, detestabilis! thine own paramour!"
+
+"He hath beat me with his bridle rein, he hath given a silver broad
+piece to Grisell; Grisell hath sat on his knee; Graul never pardons!"
+
+The friar, rogue as he was, shuddered.  "I cannot help thee to murder,
+I cannot give thee the potion; name some other reward."
+
+"I go--"
+
+"Nay, nay, think, pause."
+
+"I know where Warner is hid.  By this hour to-morrow night, I can
+place him in thy power.  Say the word, and pledge me the draught."
+
+"Well, well, mulier abominabilis!--that is, irresistible bonnibell.  I
+cannot give thee the potion; but I will teach thee an art which can
+make sleep heavier than the anodyne, and which wastes not like the
+essence, but strengthens by usage,--an art thou shalt have at thy
+fingers' ends, and which often draws from the sleeper the darkest
+secrets of his heart."  [We have before said that animal magnetism was
+known to Bungey, and familiar to the necromancers, or rather
+theurgists, of the Middle Ages.]
+
+"It is magic," said Graul, with joy.
+
+"Ay, magic."
+
+"I will bring thee the wizard.  But listen; he never stirs abroad,
+save with his daughter.  I must bring both."
+
+"Nay, I want not the girl."
+
+"But I dare not throttle her, for a great lord loves her, who would
+find out the deed and avenge it; and if she be left behind, she will
+go to the lord, and the lord will discover what thou hast done with
+the wizard, and thou wilt hang!"
+
+"Never say 'Hang' to me, Graul: it is ill-mannered and ominous.  Who
+is the lord?"
+
+"Hastings."
+
+"Pest!--and already he hath been searching for the thing yonder; and I
+have brooded over it night and day, like a hen over a chalk egg,--only
+that the egg does not snap off the hen's claws, as that diabolism
+would fain snap off my digits.  But the war will carry Hastings away
+in its whirlwind; and, in danger, the duchess is my slave, and will
+bear me through all.  So, thou mayst bring the girl; and strangle her
+not; for no good ever comes of a murder,--unless, indeed, it be
+absolutely necessary!"
+
+"I know the men who will help me, bold ribauds, whom I will guerdon
+myself; for I want not thy coins, but thy craft.  When the curfew has
+tolled, and the bat hunts the moth, we will bring thee the quarry--"
+
+Graul turned; but as she gained the door, she stopped, and said
+abruptly, throwing back her hood,--
+
+"What age dost thou deem me?"
+
+"Marry," quoth the friar, "an' I had not seen thee on thy mother's
+knee when she followed my stage of tregetour, I should have guessed
+thee for thirty; but thou hast led too jolly a life to look still in
+the blossom.  Why speer'st thou the question?"
+
+"Because when trooper and ribaud say to me, 'Graul, thou art too worn
+and too old to drink of our cup and sit in the lap, to follow the
+young fere to the battle, and weave the blithe dance in the fair,' I
+would depart from my sisters, and have a hut of my own, and a black
+cat without a white hair, and steal herbs by the new moon, and bones
+from the charnel, and curse those whom I hate, and cleave the misty
+air on a besom, like Mother Halkin of Edmonton.  Ha, ha! Master, thou
+shalt present me then to the Sabbat.  Graul has the mettle for a bonny
+witch!"
+
+The tymbestere vanished with a laugh.  The friar muttered a
+paternoster for once, perchance, devoutly, and after having again
+deliberately scanned the disjecta membra of the Eureka, gravely took
+forth a duck's egg from his cupboard, and applied the master-agent of
+the machine which Warner hoped was to change the face of the globe to
+the only practical utility it possessed to the mountebank's
+comprehension.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE MEETING OF HASTINGS AND KATHERINE.
+
+The next morning, while Edward was engaged in levying from his opulent
+citizens all the loans he could extract, knowing that gold is the
+sinew of war; while Worcester was manning the fortress of the Tower,
+in which the queen, then near her confinement, was to reside during
+the campaign; while Gloucester was writing commissions to captains and
+barons to raise men; while Sir Anthony Lord Rivers was ordering
+improvements in his dainty damasquine armour, and the whole Fortress
+Palatine was animated and alive with the stir of the coming strife,--
+Lord Hastings escaped from the bustle, and repaired to the house of
+Katherine.  With what motive, with what intentions, was not known
+clearly to himself,--perhaps, for there was bitterness in his very
+love for Katherine, to enjoy the retaliation due to his own wounded
+pride, and say to the idol of his youth, as he had said to Gloucester,
+"Time is, time was;" perhaps with some remembrance of the faith due to
+Sibyll, wakened up the more now that Katherine seemed actually to
+escape from the ideal image into the real woman,--to be easily wooed
+and won.  But, certainly, Sibyll's cause was not wholly lost, though
+greatly shaken and endangered, when Lord Hastings alighted at Lady
+Bonville's gate; but his face gradually grew paler, his mien less
+assured, as he drew nearer and nearer to the apartment and the
+presence of the widowed Katherine.
+
+She was seated alone, and in the same room in which he had last seen
+her.  Her deep mourning only served, by contrasting the pale and
+exquisite clearness of her complexion, to enhance her beauty.
+Hastings bowed low, and seated himself by her side in silence.
+
+The Lady of Bonville eyed him for some moments with an unutterable
+expression of melancholy and tenderness.  All her pride seemed to have
+gone; the very character of her face was changed: grave severity had
+become soft timidity, and stately self-control was broken into the
+unmistaken struggle of hope and fear.
+
+"Hastings--William!" she said, in a gentle and low whisper, and at the
+sound of that last name from those lips, the noble felt his veins
+thrill and his heart throb.  "If," she continued, "the step I have
+taken seems to thee unwomanly and too bold, know, at least, what was
+my design and my excuse.  There was a time" (and Katherine blushed)
+"when, thou knowest well, that, had this hand been mine to bestow, it
+would have been his who claimed the half of this ring."  And Katherine
+took from a small crystal casket the well-remembered token.
+
+"The broken ring foretold but the broken troth," said Hastings,
+averting his face.
+
+"Thy conscience rebukes thy words," replied Katherine, sadly; "I
+pledged my faith, if thou couldst win my father's word.  What maid,
+and that maid a Nevile, could so forget duty and honour as to pledge
+thee more?  We were severed.  Pass--oh, pass over that time!  My
+father loved me dearly; but when did pride and ambition ever deign to
+take heed of the wild fancies of a girl's heart?  Three suitors,
+wealthy lords, whose alliance gave strength to my kindred in the day
+when their very lives depended on their swords, were rivals for Earl
+Salisbury's daughter.  Earl Salisbury bade his daughter choose.  Thy
+great friend and my own kinsman, Duke Richard of York, himself pleaded
+for thy rivals.  He proved to me that my disobedience--if, indeed, for
+the first time, a child of my House could disobey its chief--would be
+an external barrier to thy fortune; that while Salisbury was thy foe,
+he himself could not advance thy valiancy and merit; that it was with
+me to forward thy ambition, though I could not reward thy love; that
+from the hour I was another's, my mighty kinsmen themselves--for they
+were generous--would be the first to aid the duke in thy career.
+Hastings, even then I would have prayed, at least, to be the bride,
+not of man, but God.  But I was trained--as what noble demoiselle is
+not?--to submit wholly to a parent's welfare and his will.  As a nun,
+I could but pray for the success of my father's cause; as a wife, I
+could bring to Salisbury and to York the retainers and strongholds of
+a baron.  I obeyed.  Hear me on.  Of the three suitors for my hand,
+two were young and gallant,--women deemed them fair and comely; and
+had my choice been one of these, thou mightest have deemed that a new
+love had chased the old.  Since choice was mine, I chose the man love
+could not choose, and took this sad comfort to my heart, 'He, the
+forsaken Hastings, will see in my very choice that I was but the slave
+of duty, my choice itself my penance.'"
+
+Katherine paused, and tears dropped fast from her eyes.  Hastings held
+his hand over his countenance, and only by the heaving of his heart
+was his emotion visible.  Katherine resumed:--
+
+"Once wedded, I knew what became a wife.  We met again; and to thy
+first disdain and anger (which it had been dishonour in me to soothe
+by one word that said, 'The wife remembers the maiden's love'),--to
+these, thy first emotions, succeeded the more cruel revenge, which
+would have changed sorrow and struggle to remorse and shame.  And
+then, then--weak woman that I was!--I wrapped myself in scorn and
+pride.  Nay, I felt deep anger--was it unjust?--that thou couldst so
+misread and so repay the heart which had nothing left save virtue to
+compensate for love.  And yet, yet, often when thou didst deem me most
+hard, most proof against memory and feeling--But why relate the trial?
+Heaven supported me, and if thou lovest me no longer, thou canst not
+despise me."
+
+At these last words Hastings was at her feet, bending over her hand,
+and stifled by his emotions.  Katherine gazed at him for a moment
+through her own tears, and then resumed:--
+
+"But thou hadst, as man, consolations no woman would desire or covet.
+And oh, what grieved me most was, not--no, not the jealous, the
+wounded vanity, but it was at least this self-accusation, this
+remorse--that--but for one goading remembrance, of love returned and
+love forsaken,--thou hadst never so descended from thy younger nature,
+never so trifled with the solemn trust of TIME.  Ah, when I have heard
+or seen or fancied one fault in thy maturer manhood, unworthy of thy
+bright youth, anger of myself has made me bitter and stern to thee;
+and if I taunted or chid or vexed thy pride, how little didst thou
+know that through the too shrewish humour spoke the too soft
+remembrance!  For this--for this; and believing that through all,
+alas! my image was not replaced, when my hand was free, I was grateful
+that I might still--" (the lady's pale cheek grew brighter than the
+rose, her voice faltered, and became low and indistinct)--"I might
+still think it mine to atone to thee for the past. And if," she added,
+with a sudden and generous energy, "if in this I have bowed my pride,
+it is because by pride thou wert wounded; and now, at last, thou hast
+a just revenge."
+
+O terrible rival for thee, lost Sibyll!  Was it wonderful that, while
+that head drooped upon his breast, while in that enchanted change
+which Love the softener makes in lips long scornful, eyes long proud
+and cold, he felt that Katherine Nevile--tender, gentle, frank without
+boldness, lofty without arrogance--had replaced the austere dame of
+Bonville, whom he half hated while he wooed,--oh, was it wonderful
+that the soul of Hastings fled back to the old time, forgot the
+intervening vows and more chill affections, and repeated only with
+passionate lips, "Katherine, loved still, loved ever, mine, mine, at
+last!"
+
+Then followed delicious silence, then vows, confessions, questions,
+answers,--the thrilling interchange of hearts long divided, and now
+rushing into one.  And time rolled on, till Katherine, gently breaking
+from her lover, said,--
+
+"And now that thou hast the right to know and guide my projects,
+approve, I pray thee, my present purpose.  War awaits thee, and we
+must part a while!"  At these words her brow darkened and her lip
+quivered.  "Oh, that I should have lived to mourn the day when Lord
+Warwick, untrue to Salisbury and to York, joined his arms with
+Lancaster and Margaret,--the day when Katherine could blush for the
+brother she had deemed the glory of her House!  No, no" (she
+continued, as Hastings interrupted her with generous excuses for the
+earl, and allusion to the known slights he had received),--"no, no;
+make not his cause the worse by telling me that an unworthy pride, the
+grudge of some thwart to his policy or power, has made him forget what
+was due to the memory of his kinsman York, to the mangled corpse of
+his father Salisbury.  Thinkest thou that but for this I could--" She
+stopped, but Hastings divined her thought, and guessed that, if
+spoken, it had run thus: "That I could, even now, have received the
+homage of one who departs to meet, with banner and clarion, my brother
+as his foe?"
+
+The lovely sweetness of the late expression had gone from Katherine's
+face, and its aspect showed that her high and ancestral spirit had
+yielded but to one passion.  She pursued,--
+
+"While this strife lasts, it becomes my widowhood and kindred position
+with the earl to retire to the convent my mother founded.  To-morrow I
+depart."
+
+"Alas!" said Hastings, "thou speakest of the strife as if but a single
+field.  But Warwick returns not to these shores, nor bows himself to
+league with Lancaster, for a chance hazardous and desperate, as Edward
+too rashly deems it.  It is in vain to deny that the earl is prepared
+for a grave and lengthened war, and much I doubt whether Edward can
+resist his power; for the idolatry of the very land will swell the
+ranks of so dread a rebel.  What if he succeed; what if we be driven
+into exile, as Henry's friends before us; what if the king-maker be
+the king-dethroner?  Then, Katherine, then once more thou wilt be at
+the best of thy hostile kindred, and once more, dowered as thou art,
+and thy womanhood still in its richest bloom, thy hand will be lost to
+Hastings."
+
+"Nay, if that be all thy fear, take with thee this pledge,--that
+Warwick's treason to the House for which my father fell dissolves his
+power over one driven to disown him as a brother,--knowing Earl
+Salisbury, had he foreseen such disgrace, had disowned him as a son.
+And if there be defeat and flight and exile, wherever thou wanderest,
+Hastings, shall Katherine be found beside thee.  Fare thee well, and
+Our Lady shield thee! may thy lance be victorious against all foes,--
+save one.  Thou wilt forbear my--that is, the earl!"  And Katherine,
+softened at that thought, sobbed aloud.
+
+"And come triumph or defeat, I have thy pledge?" said Hastings,
+soothing her.
+
+"See," said Katherine, taking the broken ring from the casket; "now,
+for the first time since I bore the name of Bonville, I lay this relic
+on my heart; art thou answered?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+HASTINGS LEARNS WHAT HAS BEFALLEN SIBYLL, REPAIRS TO THE KING, AND
+ENCOUNTERS AN OLD RIVAL.
+
+"It is destiny," said Hastings to himself, when early the next morning
+he was on his road to the farm--"it is destiny,--and who can resist
+his fate?"
+
+"It is destiny!"--phrase of the weak human heart!  "It is destiny!"
+dark apology for every error!  The strong and the virtuous admit no
+destiny!  On earth guides conscience, in heaven watches God.  And
+destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one, to dethrone
+the other!
+
+Hastings spared not his good steed.  With great difficulty had he
+snatched a brief respite from imperious business, to accomplish the
+last poor duty now left to him to fulfil,--to confront the maid whose
+heart he had seduced in vain, and say at length, honestly and firmly,
+"I cannot wed thee.  Forget me, and farewell."
+
+Doubtless his learned and ingenious mind conjured up softer words than
+these, and more purfled periods wherein to dress the iron truth.  But
+in these two sentences the truth lay.  He arrived at the farm, he
+entered the house; he felt it as a reprieve that he met not the
+bounding step of the welcoming Sibyll.  He sat down in the humble
+chamber, and waited a while in patience,--no voice was heard.  The
+silence at length surprised and alarmed him.  He proceeded farther.
+He was met by the widowed owner of the house, who was weeping; and her
+first greeting prepared him for what had chanced.  "Oh, my lord, you
+have come to tell me they are safe, they have not fallen into the
+hands of their enemies,--the good gentleman, so meek, the poor lady,
+so fair!"
+
+Hastings stood aghast; a few sentences more explained all that he
+already guessed.  A strange man had arrived the evening before at the
+house, praying Adam and his daughter to accompany him to the Lord
+Hastings, who had been thrown from his horse, and was now in a cottage
+in the neighbouring lane,--not hurt dangerously, but unable to be
+removed, and who had urgent matters to communicate.  Not questioning
+the truth of this story, Adam and Sibyll had hurried forth, and
+returned no more.  Alarmed by their long absence, the widow, who at
+first received the message from the stranger, went herself to the
+cottage, and found that the story was a fable.  Every search had since
+been made for Adam and his daughter, but in vain.  The widow,
+confirmed in her previous belief that her lodgers had been attainted
+Lancastrians, could but suppose that they had been thus betrayed to
+their enemies.  Hastings heard this with a dismay and remorse
+impossible to express.  His only conjecture was that the king had
+discovered their retreat, and taken this measure to break off the
+intercourse he had so sternly denounced.  Full of these ideas, he
+hastily remounted, and stopped not till once more at the gates of the
+Tower.  Hastening to Edward's closet, the moment he saw the king, he
+exclaimed, in great emotion, "My liege, my liege, do not at this hour,
+when I have need of my whole energy to serve thee, do not madden my
+brain, and palsy my arm.  This old man--the poor maid--Sibyll--
+Warner,--speak, my liege--only tell me they are safe; promise me they
+shall go free, and I swear to obey thee in all else!  I will thank
+thee in the battlefield!"
+
+"Thou art mad, Hastings!" said the king, in great astonishment.
+"Hush!" and he glanced significantly at a person who stood before
+several heaps of gold, ranged upon a table in the recess of the room.
+"See," he whispered, "yonder is the goldsmith, who hath brought me a
+loan from himself and his fellows!  Pretty tales for the city thy
+folly will send abroad!"
+
+But before Hastings could vent his impatient answer, this person, to
+Edward's still greater surprise, had advanced from his place, and
+forgetting all ceremony, had seized Hastings by the hem of his
+surcoat, exclaiming,--
+
+"My lord, my lord, what new horror is this?  Sibyll!--methought she
+was worthless, and had fled to thee!"
+
+"Ten thousand devils!" shouted the king, "am I ever to be tormented by
+that damnable wizard and his witch child?  And is it, Sir Peer and Sir
+Goldsmith, in your king's closet that ye come, the very eve before he
+marches to battle, to speer and glower at each other like two madmen
+as ye are?"
+
+Neither peer nor goldsmith gave way, till the courtier, naturally
+recovering himself the first, fell on his knee; and said, with firm
+though profound respect: "Sire, if poor William Hastings has ever
+merited from the king one kindly thought, one generous word, forgive
+now whatever may displease thee in his passion or his suit, and tell
+him what prison contains those whom it would forever dishonour his
+knighthood to know punished and endangered but for his offence."
+
+"My lord," answered the king, softened but still surprised, "think you
+seriously that I, who but reluctantly in this lovely month leave my
+green lawns of Shene to save a crown, could have been vexing my brain
+by stratagems to seize a lass, whom I swear by Saint George I do not
+envy thee in the least?  If that does not suffice, incredulous
+dullard, why then take my kingly word, never before passed for so
+slight an occasion, that I know nothing whatsoever of thy damsel's
+whereabout nor her pestilent father's,--where they abode of late,
+where they now be; and, what is more, if any man has usurped his
+king's right to imprison the king's subjects, find him out, and name
+his punishment.  Art thou convinced?"
+
+"I am, my liege," said Hastings.
+
+"But--" began the goldsmith.
+
+"Holloa, you, too, sir!  This is too much!  We have condescended to
+answer the man who arms three thousand retainers--"
+
+"And I, please your Highness, bring you the gold to pay them," said
+the trader, bluntly.
+
+The king bit his lip, and then burst into his usual merry laugh.
+
+"Thou art in the right, Master Alwyn.  Finish counting the pieces, and
+then go and consult with my chamberlain,--he must off with the cock-
+crow; but, since ye seem to understand each other, he shall make thee
+his lieutenant of search, and I will sign any order he pleases for the
+recovery of the lost wisdom and the stolen beauty.  Go and calm
+thyself, Hastings."
+
+"I will attend you presently, my lord," said Alwyn, aside, "in your
+own apartment."
+
+"Do so," said Hastings; and, grateful for the king's consideration, he
+sought his rooms.  There, indeed, Alwyn soon joined him, and learned
+from the nobleman what filled him at once with joy and terror.
+Knowing that Warner and Sibyll had left the Tower, he had surmised
+that the girl's virtue had at last succumbed; and it delighted him to
+hear from Lord Hastings, whose word to men was never questionable, the
+solemn assurance of her unstained chastity.  But he trembled at this
+mysterious disappearance, and knew not to whom to impute the snare,
+till the penetration of Hastings suddenly alighted near, at least, to
+the clew.  "The Duchess of Bedford," said he, "ever increasing in
+superstition as danger increases, may have desired to refind so great
+a scholar and reputed an astrologer and magician; if so, all is safe.
+On the other hand, her favourite, the friar, ever bore a jealous
+grudge to poor Adam, and may have sought to abstract him from her
+grace's search; here there may be molestation to Adam, but surely no
+danger to Sibyll.  Hark ye, Alwyn, thou lovest the maid more worthily,
+and--"  Hastings stopped short; for such is infirm human nature, that,
+though he had mentally resigned Sibyll forever, he could not yet
+calmly face the thought of resigning her to a rival.  "Thou lovest
+her," he renewed, more coldly, "and to thee, therefore, I may safely
+trust the search which time and circumstance and a soldier's duty
+forbid to me.  And believe--oh, believe that I say not this from a
+passion which may move thy jealousy, but rather with a brother's holy
+love.  If thou canst but see her safe, and lodged where no danger nor
+wrong can find her, thou hast no friend in the wide world whose
+service through life thou mayst command like mine."
+
+"My lord," said Alwyn, dryly, "I want no friends!  Young as I am, I
+have lived long enough to see that friends follow fortune, but never
+make it!  I will find this poor maid and her honoured father, if I
+spend my last groat on the search.  Get me but such an order from the
+king as may place the law at my control, and awe even her grace of
+Bedford,--and I promise the rest!"
+
+Hastings, much relieved, deigned to press the goldsmith's reluctant
+hand; and, leaving him alone for a few minutes, returned with a
+warrant from the king, which seemed to Alwyn sufficiently precise and
+authoritative.  The goldsmith then departed, and first he sought the
+friar, but found him not at home.  Bungey had taken with him, as was
+his wont, the keys of his mysterious apartment.  Alwyn then hastened
+elsewhere, to secure those experienced in such a search, and to head
+it in person.  At the Tower, the evening was passed in bustle and
+excitement,--the last preparations for departure.  The queen, who was
+then far advanced towards her confinement, was, as we before said, to
+remain at the Tower, which was now strongly manned.  Roused from her
+wonted apathy by the imminent dangers that awaited Edward, the night
+was passed by her in tears and prayers, by him in the sound sleep of
+confident valour.  The next morning departed for the North the several
+leaders,--Gloucester, Rivers, Hastings, and the king.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE LANDING OF LORD WARWICK, AND THE EVENTS THAT ENSUE THEREON.
+
+And Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, "prepared such a greate navie
+as lightly hath not been seene before gathered in manner of all
+nations, which armie laie at the mouth of the Seyne ready to fight
+with the Earl of Warwick, when he should set out of his harborowe."
+[Hall, p. 282, ed. 1809.]
+
+But the winds fought for the Avenger.  In the night came "a terrible
+tempest," which scattered the duke's ships "one from another, so that
+two of them were not in compagnie together in one place;" and when the
+tempest had done its work, it passed away; and the gales were fair,
+and the heaven was clear, when, the next day, the earl "halsed up the
+sayles," and came in sight of Dartmouth.
+
+It was not with an army of foreign hirelings that Lord Warwick set
+forth on his mighty enterprise.  Scanty indeed were the troops he
+brought from France,--for he had learned from England that "men so
+much daily and hourely desired and wished so sore his arrival and
+return, that almost all men were in harness, looking for his landyng."
+[The popular feeling in favour of the earl is described by Hall, with
+somewhat more eloquence and vigour than are common with that homely
+chronicler: "The absence of the Earle of Warwick made the common
+people daily more and more to long and bee desirous to have the sight
+of him, and presently to behold his personage.  For they judged that
+the sunne was clerely taken from the world when hee was absent.  In
+such high estimation amongst the people was his name, that neither no
+one manne they had in so much honour, neither no one persone they so
+much praised, or to the clouds so highly extolled.  What shall I say?
+His only name sounded in every song, in the mouth of the common
+people, and his persone [effigies] was represented with great
+reverence when publique plaies or open triumphes should bee skewed or
+set furthe abrode in the stretes," etc.  This lively passage, if not
+too highly coloured, serves to show us the rude saturnalian kind of
+liberty that existed, even under a king so vindictive as Edward IV.
+Though an individual might be banged for the jest that he would make
+his son heir to the crown (namely, the grocer's shop, which bore that
+sign), yet no tyranny could deal with the sentiment of the masses.  In
+our own day it would be less safe than in that to make public
+exhibition "in plaies and triumphes" of sympathy with a man attainted
+as a traitor, and in open rebellion to the crown.]  As his ships
+neared the coast, and the banner of the Ragged Staff, worked in gold,
+shone in the sun, the shores swarmed with armed crowds, not to resist
+but to welcome.  From cliff to cliff, wide and far, blazed rejoicing
+bonfires; and from cliff to cliff, wide and far, burst the shout,
+when, first of all his men, bareheaded, but, save the burgonet, in
+complete mail, the popular hero leaped to shore.
+
+"When the earl had taken land, he made a proclamation, in the name of
+King Henry VI., upon high paynes commanding and charging all men apt
+or able to bear armour, to prepare themselves to fight against Edward,
+Duke of York, who had untruly usurped the croune and dignity of this
+realm."  [Hall, p. 82.]
+
+And where was Edward?  Afar, following the forces of Fitzhugh and
+Robin of Redesdale, who by artful retreat drew him farther and farther
+northward, and left all the other quarters of the kingdom free to send
+their thousands to the banners of Lancaster and Warwick.  And even as
+the news of the earl's landing reached the king, it spread also
+through all the towns of the North; and all the towns of the North
+were in "a great rore, and made fires, and sang songs, crying, 'King
+Henry! King Henry! a Warwicke! a Warwicke!'"  But his warlike and
+presumptuous spirit forsook not the chief of that bloody and fatal
+race,--the line of the English Pelops,--"bespattered with kindred
+gore."  [Aeschylus: Agamemnon]  A messenger from Burgundy was in his
+tent when the news reached him.  "Back to the duke!" cried Edward;
+"tell him to recollect his navy, guard the sea, scour the streams,
+that the earl shall not escape, nor return to France; for the doings
+in England, let me alone!  I have ability and puissance to overcome
+all enemies and rebels in mine own realm."  [Hall, p. 283.]
+
+And therewith he raised his camp, abandoned the pursuit of Fitzhugh,
+summoned Montagu to join him (it being now safer to hold the marquis
+near him, and near the axe, if his loyalty became suspected), and
+marched on to meet the earl.  Nor did the earl tarry from the
+encounter.  His army, swelling as he passed, and as men read his
+proclamations to reform all grievances and right all wrongs, he
+pressed on to meet the king, while fast and fast upon Edward's rear
+came the troops of Fitzhugh and Hilyard, no longer flying but
+pursuing.  The king was the more anxious to come up to Warwick,
+inasmuch as he relied greatly upon the treachery of Clarence, either
+secretly to betray or openly to desert the earl.  And he knew that if
+he did the latter on the eve of a battle, it could not fail morally to
+weaken Warwick, and dishearten his army by fear that desertion should
+prove, as it ever does, the most contagious disease that can afflict a
+camp.  It is probable, however, that the enthusiasm which had
+surrounded the earl with volunteers so numerous had far exceeded the
+anticipations of the inexperienced Clarence, and would have forbid him
+that opportunity of betraying the earl.  However this be, the rival
+armies drew nearer and nearer.  The king halted in his rapid march at
+a small village, and took up his quarters in a fortified house, to
+which there was no access but by a single bridge.  [Sharon Turner,
+Comines.]  Edward himself retired for a short time to his couch, for
+he had need of all his strength in the battle he foresaw; but scarce
+had he closed his eyes, when Alexander Carlile [Hearne: Fragment], the
+serjeant of the royal minstrels, followed by Hastings and Rivers
+(their jealousy laid at rest for a time in the sense of their king's
+danger), rushed into his room.
+
+"Arm, sire, arm!--Lord Montagu has thrown off the mask, and rides
+through thy troops, shouting 'Long live King Henry!'"
+
+"Ah, traitor!" cried the king, leaping from his bed.  "From Warwick
+hate was my due, but not from Montagu!  Rivers, help to buckle on my
+mail.  Hastings, post my body-guard at the bridge.  We will sell our
+lives dear."
+
+Hastings vanished.  Edward had scarcely hurried on his helm, cuirass,
+and greaves, when Gloucester entered, calm in the midst of peril.
+
+"Your enemies are marching to seize you, brother.  Hark! behind you
+rings the cry, 'A Fitzhugh! a Robin! death to the tyrant!'  Hark! in
+front, 'A Montagu! a Warwick!  Long live King Henry!'  I come to
+redeem my word,--to share your exile or your death.  Choose either
+while there is yet time.  Thy choice is mine!"
+
+And while he spoke, behind, before, came the various cries nearer and
+nearer.  The lion of March was in the toils.
+
+"Now, my two-handed sword!" said Edward.  "Gloucester, in this weapon
+learn my choice!"
+
+But now all the principal barons and captains, still true to the king
+whose crown was already lost, flocked in a body to the chamber.  They
+fell on their knees, and with tears implored him to save himself for a
+happier day.
+
+"There is yet time to escape," said D'Eyncourt, "to pass the bridge,
+to gain the seaport!  Think not that a soldier's death will be left
+thee.  Numbers will suffice to encumber thine arm, to seize thy
+person.  Live not to be Warwick's prisoner,--shown as a wild beast in
+its cage to the hooting crowd!"
+
+"If not on thyself," exclaimed Rivers, "have pity on these loyal
+gentlemen, and for the sake of their lives preserve thine own.  What
+is flight?  Warwick fled!"
+
+"True,--and returned!" added Gloucester.  "You are right, my lords.
+Come, sire, we must fly.  Our rights fly not with us, but shall fight
+for us in absence!"
+
+The calm WILL of this strange and terrible boy had its effect upon
+Edward.  He suffered his brother to lead him from the chamber,
+grinding his teeth in impotent rage.  He mounted his horse, while
+Rivers held the stirrup, and with some six or seven knights and earls
+rode to the bridge, already occupied by Hastings and a small but
+determined guard.
+
+"Come, Hastings," said the king, with a ghastly smile,--"they tell us
+we must fly!"
+
+"True, sire, haste, haste!  I stay but to deceive the enemy by
+feigning to defend the pass, and to counsel, as I best may, the
+faithful soldiers we leave behind."
+
+"Brave Hastings!" said Gloucester, pressing his hand, "you do well,
+and I envy you the glory of this post. Come, sire."
+
+"Ay, ay," said the king, with a sudden and fierce cry, "we go,--but at
+least slaughtering as we go.  See! yon rascal troop! ride we through
+their midst!  Havock and revenge!"
+
+He set spurs to his steed, galloped over the bridge, and before his
+companions could join him, dashed alone into the very centre of the
+advanced guard sent to invest the fortress, and while they were yet
+shouting, "Where is the tyrant, where is Edward?"
+
+"Here!" answered a voice of thunder,--"here, rebels and faytors, in
+your ranks!"
+
+This sudden and appalling reply, even more than the sweep of the
+gigantic sword, before which were riven sallet and mail as the
+woodman's axe rives the fagot, created amongst the enemy that singular
+panic, which in those ages often scattered numbers before the arm and
+the name of one.  They recoiled in confusion and dismay.  Many
+actually threw down their arms and fled.  Through a path broad and
+clear amidst the forest of pikes, Gloucester and the captains followed
+the flashing track of the king, over the corpses, headless or
+limbless, that he felled as he rode.
+
+Meanwhile, with a truer chivalry, Hastings, taking advantage of the
+sortie which confused and delayed the enemy, summoned such of the
+loyal as were left in the fortress, advised them, as the only chance
+of life, to affect submission to Warwick; but when the time came, to
+remember their old allegiance, [Sharon Turner, vol. iii. 280.] and
+promising that he would not desert them, save with life, till their
+safety was pledged by the foe, reclosed his visor, and rode back to
+the front of the bridge.
+
+And now the king and his comrades had cut their way through all
+barrier, but the enemy still wavered and lagged, till suddenly the cry
+of "Robin of Redesdale!" was heard, and sword in hand, Hilyard,
+followed by a troop of horse, dashed to the head of the besiegers,
+and, learning the king's escape, rode off in pursuit.  His brief
+presence and sharp rebuke reanimated the falterers, and in a few
+minutes they gained the bridge.
+
+"Halt, sirs," cried Hastings; "I would offer capitulation to your
+leader!  Who is he?"
+
+A knight on horseback advanced from the rest.  Hastings lowered the
+point of his sword.
+
+"Sir, we yield this fortress to your hands upon one condition,--our
+men yonder are willing to submit, and shout with you for Henry VI.
+Pledge me your word that you and your soldiers spare their lives and
+do them no wrong, and we depart."
+
+"And if I pledge it not?" said the knight.
+
+"Then for every warrior who guards this bridge count ten dead men
+amongst your ranks."
+
+"Do your worst,--our bloods are up!  We want life for life! revenge
+for the subjects butchered by your tyrant chief!  Charge! to the
+attack! charge! pike and bill!"  The knight spurred on, the
+Lancastrians followed, and the knight reeled from his horse into the
+moat below, felled by the sword of Hastings.
+
+For several minutes the pass was so gallantly defended that the strife
+seemed uncertain, though fearfully unequal, when Lord Montagu himself,
+hearing what had befallen, galloped to the spot, threw down his
+truncheon, cried "Hold!" and the slaughter ceased.  To this nobleman
+Hastings repeated the terms he had proposed.
+
+"And," said Montagu, turning with anger to the Lancastrians, who
+formed a detachment of Fitzhugh's force--"can Englishmen insist upon
+butchering Englishmen?  Rather thank we Lord Hastings that he would
+spare good King Henry so many subjects' lives!  The terms are granted,
+my lord; and your own life also, and those of your friends around you,
+vainly brave in a wrong cause.  Depart!"
+
+"Ah, Montagu," said Hastings, touched, and in a whisper, "what pity
+that so gallant a gentleman should leave a rebel's blot upon his
+scutcheon!"
+
+"When chiefs and suzerains are false and perjured, Lord Hastings,"
+answered Montagu, "to obey them is not loyalty, but serfdom; and
+revolt is not disloyalty, but a freeman's duty.  One day thou mayst
+know that truth, but too late."  [It was in the midst of his own
+conspiracy against Richard of Gloucester that the head of Lord
+Hastings fell.]
+
+Hastings made no reply, waved his hand to his fellow-defenders of the
+bridge, and, followed by them, went slowly and deliberately on, till
+clear of the murmuring and sullen foe; then putting spurs to their
+steeds, these faithful warriors rode fast to rejoin their king;
+overtook Hilyard on the way, and after a fierce skirmish, a blow from
+Hastings unhorsed and unhelmed the stalwart Robin, and left him so
+stunned as to check further pursuit.  They at last reached the king,
+and gaining, with him and his party, the town of Lynn, happily found
+one English and two Dutch vessels on the point of sailing.  Without
+other raiment than the mail they wore, without money, the men a few
+hours before hailed as sovereign or as peers fled from their native
+land as outcasts and paupers.  New dangers beset them on the sea: the
+ships of the Easterlings, at war both with France and England, bore
+down upon their vessels.  At the risk of drowning they ran ashore near
+Alcmaer.  The large ships of the Easterlings followed as far as the
+low water would permit, "intendeing at the fludde to have obtained
+their prey."  [Hall.]  In this extremity, the lord of the province
+(Louis of Grauthuse) came aboard their vessels, protected the
+fugitives from the Easterlings, conducted them to the Hague, and
+apprised the Duke of Burgundy how his brother-in-law had lost his
+throne.  Then were verified Lord Warwick's predictions of the faith of
+Burgundy!  The duke for whose alliance Edward had dishonoured the man
+to whom he owed his crown, so feared the victorious earl, that "he had
+rather have heard of King Edward's death than of his discomfiture;"
+[Hall, p. 279] and his first thought was to send an embassy to the
+king-maker, praying the amity and alliance of the restored dynasty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+WHAT BEFELL ADAM WARNER AND SIBYLL WHEN MADE SUBJECT TO THE GREAT
+FRIAR BUNGEY.
+
+We must now return to the Tower of London,--not, indeed, to its lordly
+halls and gilded chambers, but to the room of Friar Bungey.  We must
+go back somewhat in time; and on the day following the departure of
+the king and his lords, conjure up in that strangely furnished
+apartment the form of the burly friar, standing before the
+disorganized Eureka, with Adam Warner by his side.
+
+Graul, as we have seen, had kept her word, and Sibyll and her father,
+having fallen into the snare, were suddenly gagged, bound, led through
+by-paths to a solitary hut, where a covered wagon was in waiting, and
+finally, at nightfall, conducted to the Tower.  The friar, whom his
+own repute, jolly affability, and favour with the Duchess of Bedford
+made a considerable person with the authorities of the place, had
+already obtained from the deputy-governor an order to lodge two
+persons, whom his zeal for the king sought to convict of necromantic
+practices in favour of the rebellion, in the cells set apart for such
+unhappy captives.  Thither the prisoners were conducted.  The friar
+did not object to their allocation in contiguous cells; and the jailer
+deemed him mighty kind and charitable, when he ordered that they might
+be well served and fed till their examination.
+
+He did not venture, however, to summon his captives till the departure
+of the king, when the Tower was in fact at the disposition of his
+powerful patroness, and when he thought he might stretch his authority
+as far as he pleased, unquestioned and unchid.
+
+Now, therefore, on the day succeeding Edward's departure, Adam Warner
+was brought from his cell, and led to the chamber where the triumphant
+friar received him in majestic state.  The moment Warner entered, he
+caught sight of the chaos to which his Eureka was resolved, and
+uttering a cry of mingled grief and joy, sprang forward to greet his
+profaned treasure.  The friar motioned away the jailer (whispering him
+to wait without), and they were left alone.  Bungey listened with
+curious and puzzled attention to poor Adam's broken interjections of
+lamentation and anger, and at last, clapping him roughly on the back,
+said,--
+
+"Thou knowest the secret of this magical and ugly device: but in thy
+hands it leads only to ruin and perdition.  Tell me that secret, and
+in my hands it shall turn to honour and profit.  Porkey verbey! I am a
+man of few words.  Do this, and thou shalt go free with thy daughter,
+and I will protect thee, and give thee moneys, and my fatherly
+blessing; refuse to do it, and thou shalt go from thy snug cell into a
+black dungeon full of newts and rats, where thou shalt rot till thy
+nails are like birds' talons, and thy skin shrivelled up into mummy,
+and covered with hair like Nebuchadnezzar!"
+
+"Miserable varlet!  Give thee my secret, give thee my fame, my life!
+Never!  I scorn and spit at thy malice!"
+
+The friar's face grew convulsed with rage.  "Wretch!" he roared forth,
+"darest thou unslip thy hound-like malignity upon great Bungey?
+Knowest thou not that he could bid the walls open and close upon thee;
+that he could set yon serpents to coil round thy limbs, and yon lizard
+to gnaw out thine entrails?  Despise not my mercy, and descend to
+plain sense.  What good didst thou ever reap from thy engine?  Why
+shouldst thou lose liberty--nay, life--if I will, for a thing that has
+cursed thee with man's horror and hate?"
+
+"Art thou Christian and friar to ask me why?  Were not Christians
+themselves hunted by wild beasts, and burned at the stake, and boiled
+in the caldron for their belief?  Knave, whatever is holiest men ever
+persecute.  Read thy Bible!"
+
+"Read the Bible!" exclaimed Bungey, in pious horror at such a
+proposition.  "Ah, blasphemer, now I have thee!  Thou art a heretic
+and Lollard.  Hollo, there!"
+
+The friar stamped his foot, the door opened; but to his astonishment
+and dismay appeared, not the grim jailer, but the Duchess of Bedford
+herself, preceded by Nicholas Alwyn.  "I told your Grace truly--see,
+lady!" cried the goldsmith.  "Vile impostor, where hast thou hidden
+this wise man's daughter?"
+
+The friar turned his dull, bead-like eyes in vacant consternation from
+Nicholas to Adam, from Adam to the duchess.  "Sir friar," said
+Jacquetta, mildly--for she wished to conciliate the rival seers--"what
+means this over-zealous violation of law?  Is it true, as Master Alwyn
+affirms, that thou hast stolen away and seducted this venerable sage
+and his daughter,--a maid I deemed worthy of a post in my own
+household?"
+
+"Daughter and lady," said the friar, sullenly, "this ill faytor, I
+have reason to know, has been practising spells for Lord Warwick and
+the enemy.  I did but summon him hither that my art might undo his
+charms; and as for his daughter, it seemed more merciful to let her
+attend him than to leave her alone and unfriended; specially," added
+the friar with a grin, "since the poor lord she hath witched is gone
+to the wars."
+
+"It is true, then, wretch, that thou or thy caitiffs have dared to lay
+hands on a maiden of birth and blood!" exclaimed Alwyn.  "Tremble!--
+see, here, the warrant signed by the king, offering a reward for thy
+detection, empowering me to give thee up to the laws.  By Saint
+Dunstan, but for thy friar's frock, thou shouldst hang!"
+
+"Tut, tut, Master Goldsmith," said the duchess, haughtily, "lower thy
+tone.  This holy man is under my protection, and his fault was but
+over-zeal.  What were this sage's devices and spells?"
+
+"Marry," said the friar, "that is what your Grace just hindereth my
+knowing.  But he cannot deny that he is a pestilent astrologer, and
+sends word to the rebels what hours are lucky or fatal for battle and
+assault."
+
+"Ha!" said the duchess, "he is an astrologer! true, and came nearer to
+the alchemist's truth than any multiplier that ever served me!  My own
+astrologer is just dead,--why died he at such a time?  Peace, peace!
+be there peace between two so learned men.  Forgive thy brother,
+Master Warner!"  Adam had hitherto disdained all participation in this
+dialogue.  In fact, he had returned to the Eureka, and was silently
+examining if any loss of the vital parts had occurred in its
+melancholy dismemberment.  But now he turned round and said, "Lady,
+leave the lore of the stars to their great Maker.  I forgive this man,
+and thank your Grace for your justice.  I claim these poor fragments,
+and crave your leave to suffer me to depart with my device and my
+child."
+
+"No, no!" said the duchess, seizing his hand.  "Hist! whatever Lord
+Warwick paid thee, I will double.  No time now for alchemy; but for
+the horoscope, it is the veriest season.  I name thee my special
+astrologer."
+
+"Accept, accept," whispered Alwyn; "for your daughter's sake--for your
+own--nay, for the Eureka's!"
+
+Adam bowed his head, and groaned forth, "But I go not hence--no, not a
+foot--unless this goes with me.  Cruel wretch, how he hath deformed
+it!"
+
+"And now," cried Alwyn, eagerly, "this wronged and unhappy maiden?"
+
+"Go! be it thine to release and bring her to our presence, good
+Alwyn," said the duchess; "she shall lodge with her father, and
+receive all honour.  Follow me, Master Warner."
+
+No sooner, however, did the friar perceive that Alwyn had gone in
+search of the jailer, than he arrested the steps of the duchess, and
+said, with the air of a much-injured man,--
+
+"May it please your Grace to remember that unless the greater magician
+have all power and aid in thwarting the lesser, the lesser can
+prevail; and therefore, if your Grace finds, when too late, that Lord
+Warwick's or Lord Fitzhugh's arms prosper, that woe and disaster
+befall the king, say not it was the fault of Friar Bungey!  Such
+things may be.  Nathless I shall still sweat and watch and toil; and
+if, despite your unhappy favour and encouragement to this hostile
+sorcerer, the king should beat his enemies, why, then, Friar Bungey is
+not so powerless as your Grace holds him.  I have said--Porkey
+verbey!--Figilabo et conabo--et perspirabo--et hungerabo--pro vos et
+vestros, Amen!"
+
+The duchess was struck by this eloquent appeal; but more and more
+convinced of the dread science of Adam by the evident apprehensions of
+the redoubted Bungey, and firmly persuaded that she could bribe or
+induce the former to turn a science that would otherwise be hostile
+into salutary account, she contented herself with a few words of
+conciliation and compliment, and summoning the attendants who had
+followed her, bade them take up the various members of the Eureka (for
+Adam clearly demonstrated that he would not depart without them) and
+conducted the philosopher to a lofty chamber, fitted up for the
+defunct astrologer.
+
+Hither, in a short time, Alwyn had the happiness of leading Sibyll,
+and witnessing the delighted reunion of the child and father.  And
+then, after he had learned the brief details of their abduction, he
+related how, baffled in all attempt to trace their clew, he had
+convinced himself that either the duchess or Bungey was the author of
+the snare, returned to the Tower, shown the king's warrant, learned
+that an old man and a young female had indeed been admitted into the
+fortress, and hurried at once to the duchess, who, surprised at his
+narration and complaint, and anxious to regain the services of Warner,
+had accompanied him at once to the friar.
+
+"And though," added the goldsmith, "I could indeed procure you
+lodgings more welcome to ye elsewhere, yet it is well to win the
+friendship of the duchess, and royalty is ever an ill foe.  How came
+ye to quit the palace?"
+
+Sibyll changed countenance, and her father answered gravely, "We
+incurred the king's displeasure, and the excuse was the popular hatred
+of me and the Eureka."
+
+"Heaven made the people, and the devil makes three-fourths of what is
+popular!" bluntly said the man of the middle class, ever against both
+extremes.
+
+"And how," asked Sibyll, "how, honoured and true friend, didst thou
+obtain the king's warrant, and learn the snare into which we had
+fallen?"
+
+This time it was Alwyn who changed countenance.  He mused a moment,
+and then frankly answering, "Thou must thank Lord Hastings," gave the
+explanation already known to the reader.
+
+But the grateful tears this relation called forth from Sibyll, her
+clasped hands, her evident emotion of delight and love, so pained poor
+Alwyn, that he rose abruptly and took his leave.
+
+And now the Eureka was a luxury as peremptorily forbid to the
+astrologer as it had been to the alchemist!  Again the true science
+was despised, and the false cultivated and honoured.  Condemned to
+calculations which no man (however wise) in that age held altogether
+delusive, and which yet Adam Warner studied with very qualified
+belief, it happened by some of those coincidences, which have from
+time to time appeared to confirm the credulous in judicial astrology,
+that Adam's predictions became fulfilled.  The duchess was prepared
+for the first tidings that Edward's foes fled before him.  She was
+next prepared for the very day in which Warwick landed; and then her
+respect for the astrologer became strangely mingled with suspicion and
+terror, when she found that he proceeded to foretell but ominous and
+evil events; and when at last, still in corroboration of the unhappily
+too faithful horoscope, came the news of the king's flight, and the
+earl's march upon London, she fled to Friar Bungey in dismay.  And
+Friar Bungey said,--
+
+"Did I not warn you, daughter?  Had you suffered me to--"
+
+"True, true!" interrupted the duchess.  "Now take, hang, rack, drown,
+or burn your horrible rival, if you will, but undo the charm, and save
+us from the earl!"
+
+The friar's eyes twinkled, but to the first thought of spite and
+vengeance succeeded another: if he who had made the famous waxen
+effigies of the Earl of Warwick were now to be found guilty of some
+atrocious and positive violence upon Master Adam Warner, might not the
+earl be glad of so good an excuse to put an end to Himself?
+
+"Daughter," said the friar, at that reflection, and shaking his head
+mysteriously and sadly, "daughter, it is too late."
+
+The duchess in great despair flew to the queen.  Hitherto she had
+concealed from her royal daughter the employment she had given to
+Adam; for Elizabeth, who had herself suffered from the popular belief
+in Jacquetta's sorceries, had of late earnestly besought her to lay
+aside all practices that could be called into question.  Now, however,
+when she confessed to the agitated and distracted queen the retaining
+of Adam Warner, and his fatal predictions, Elizabeth, who, from
+discretion and pride, had carefully hidden from her mother (too
+vehement to keep a secret) that offence in the king, the memory of
+which had made Warner peculiarly obnoxious to him, exclaimed,--
+
+"Unhappy mother, thou hast employed the very man my fated husband
+would the most carefully have banished from the palace, the very man
+who could blast his name."
+
+The duchess was aghast and thunderstricken.
+
+"If ever I forsake Friar Bungey again!" she muttered; "OH, THE GREAT
+MAN!"
+
+But events which demand a detailed recital now rapidly pressing on,
+gave the duchess not even the time to seek further explanation of
+Elizabeth's words, much less to determine the doubt that rose in her
+enlightened mind whether Adam's spells might not be yet unravelled by
+the timely execution of the sorcerer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DELIBERATIONS OF MAYOR AND COUNCIL, WHILE LORD WARWICK MARCHES
+UPON LONDON.
+
+It was a clear and bright day in the first week of October, 1470, when
+the various scouts employed by the mayor and council of London came
+back to the Guild, at which that worshipful corporation were
+assembled,--their steeds blown and jaded, themselves panting and
+breathless,--to announce the rapid march of the Earl of Warwick.  The
+lord mayor of that year, Richard Lee, grocer and citizen, sat in the
+venerable hall in a huge leather chair, over which a pall of velvet
+had been thrown in haste, clad in his robes of state, and surrounded
+by his aldermen and the magnates of the city.  To the personal love
+which the greater part of the body bore to the young and courteous
+king was added the terror which the corporation justly entertained of
+the Lancastrian faction.  They remembered the dreadful excesses which
+Margaret had permitted to her army in the year 1461,--what time, to
+use the expression of the old historian, "the wealth of London looked
+pale;" and how grudgingly she had been restrained from condemning her
+revolted metropolis to the horrors of sack and pillage.  And the
+bearing of this august representation of the trade and power of London
+was not, at the first, unworthy of the high influence it had obtained.
+The agitation and disorder of the hour had introduced into the
+assembly several of the more active and accredited citizens not of
+right belonging to it; but they sat, in silent discipline and order,
+on long benches beyond the table crowded by the corporate officers.
+Foremost among these, and remarkable by the firmness and intelligence
+of his countenance, and the earnest self-possession with which he
+listened to his seniors, was Nicholas Alwyn, summoned to the council
+from his great influence with the apprentices and younger freemen of
+the city.
+
+As the last scout announced his news and was gravely dismissed, the
+lord mayor rose; and being, perhaps, a better educated man than many
+of the haughtiest barons, and having more at stake than most of them,
+his manner and language had a dignity and earnestness which might have
+reflected honour on the higher court of parliament.
+
+"Brethren and citizens," he said, with the decided brevity of one who
+felt it no time for many words, "in two hours we shall hear the
+clarions of Lord Warwick at our gates; in two hours we shall be
+summoned to give entrance to an army assembled in the name of King
+Henry.  I have done my duty,--I have manned the walls, I have
+marshalled what soldiers we can command, I have sent to the deputy-
+governor of the Tower--"
+
+"And what answer gives he, my lord mayor?" interrupted Humfrey
+Heyford.
+
+"None to depend upon.  He answers that Edward IV., in abdicating the
+kingdom, has left him no power to resist; and that between force and
+force, king and king, might makes right."
+
+A deep breath, like a groan, went through the assembly.
+
+Up rose Master John Stokton, the mercer.  He rose, trembling from limb
+to limb.
+
+"Worshipful my lord mayor," said he, "it seems to me that our first
+duty is to look to our own selves!"
+
+Despite the gravity of the emergence, a laugh burst forth, and was at
+once silenced at this frank avowal.
+
+"Yes," continued the mercer, turning round, and striking the table
+with his fist, in the action of a nervous man--"yes; for King Edward
+has set us the example.  A stout and a dauntless champion, whose whole
+youth has been war, King Edward has fled from the kingdom.  King
+Edward takes care of himself,--it is our duty to do the same!"
+
+Strange though it may seem, this homely selfishness went at once
+through the assembly like a flash of conviction.  There was a burst of
+applause, and, as it ceased, the sullen explosion of a bombard (or
+cannon) from the city wall announced that the warder had caught the
+first glimpse of the approaching army.
+
+Master Stokton started as if the shot had gone near to himself, and
+dropped at once into his seat, ejaculating, "The Lord have mercy upon
+us!" There was a pause of a moment, and then several of the
+corporation rose simultaneously.  The mayor, preserving his dignity,
+fixed on the sheriff.
+
+"Few words, my lord, and I have done," said Richard Gardyner--"there
+is no fighting without men.  The troops at the Tower are not to be
+counted on.  The populace are all with Lord Warwick, even though he
+brought the devil at his back.  If you hold out, look to rape and
+plunder before sunset to-morrow.  If ye yield, go forth in a body, and
+the earl is not the man to suffer one Englishman to be injured in life
+or health who once trusts to his good faith.  My say is said."
+
+"Worshipful my lord," said a thin, cadaverous alderman, who rose next,
+"this is a judgment of the Lord and His saints.  The Lollards and
+heretics have been too much suffered to run at large, and the wrath of
+Heaven is upon us."
+
+An impatient murmuring attested the unwillingness of the larger part
+of the audience to listen further; but an approving buzz from the
+elder citizens announced that the fanaticism was not without its
+favourers.  Thus stimulated and encouraged, the orator continued; and
+concluded an harangue, interrupted more stormily than all that had
+preceded, by an exhortation to leave the city to its fate, and to
+march in a body to the New Prison, draw forth five suspected Lollards,
+and burn them at Smithfield, in order to appease the Almighty and
+divert the tempest!
+
+This subject of controversy once started might have delayed the
+audience till the ragged staves of the Warwickers drove them forth
+from their hall, but for the sagacity and promptitude of the mayor.
+
+"Brethren," he said, "it matters not to me whether the counsel
+suggested be good or bad, in the main; but this have I heard,--there
+is small safety in death-bed repentance.  It is too late now to do,
+through fear of the devil, what we omitted to do through zeal for the
+Church.  The sole question is, 'Fight or make terms.'  Ye say we lack
+men; verily, yes, while no leaders are found!  Walworth, my
+predecessor, saved London from Wat Tyler.  Men were wanting then till
+the mayor and his fellow-citizens marched forth to Mile End.  It may
+be the same now.  Agree to fight, and we'll try it.  What say you,
+Nicholas Alwyn?--you know the temper of our young men."
+
+Thus called upon, Alwyn rose, and such was the good name he had
+already acquired, that every murmur hushed into eager silence.
+
+"My lord mayor," he said, "there is a proverb in my country which
+says, 'Fish swim best that's bred in the sea;' which means, I take it,
+that men do best what they are trained for!  Lord Warwick and his men
+are trained for fighting.  Few of the fish about London Bridge are
+bred in that sea.  Cry, 'London to the rescue!'--put on hauberk and
+helm, and you will have crowns enough to crack around you.  What
+follows?--Master Stokton hath said it: pillage and rape for the city,
+gibbet and cord for mayor and aldermen.  Do I say this, loving the
+House of Lancaster?  No; as Heaven shall judge me, I think that the
+policy King Edward hath chosen, and which costs him his crown to-day,
+ought to make the House of York dear to burgess and trader.  He hath
+sought to break up the iron rule of the great barons,--and never peace
+to England till that be done.  He has failed; but for a day.  He has
+yielded for a time; so must we.  'There's a time to squint, and a time
+to look even.'  I advise that we march out to the earl, that we make
+honourable terms for the city, that we take advantage of one faction
+to gain what we have not gained with the other; that we fight for our
+profit, not with swords, where we shall be worsted, but in council and
+parliament, by speech and petition.  New power is ever gentle and
+douce.  What matters to us York or Lancaster?--all we want is good
+laws.  Get the best we can from Lancaster, and when King Edward
+returns, as return he will, let him bid higher than Henry for our
+love.  Worshipful my lords and brethren, while barons and knaves go to
+loggerheads, honest men get their own.  Time grows under us like
+grass.  York and Lancaster may pull down each other,--and what is
+left?  Why, three things that thrive in all weather,--London,
+industry; and the people!  We have fallen on a rough time.  Well, what
+says the proverb?  'Boil stones in butter, and you may sup the broth.'
+I have done."
+
+This characteristic harangue, which was fortunate enough to accord
+with the selfishness of each one, and yet give the manly excuse of
+sound sense and wise policy to all, was the more decisive in its
+effect, inasmuch as the young Alwyn, from his own determined courage,
+and his avowed distaste to the Lancaster faction, had been expected to
+favour warlike counsels.  The mayor himself, who was faithfully and
+personally attached to Edward, with a deep sigh gave way to the
+feeling of the assembly.  And the resolution being once come to, Henry
+Lee was the first to give it whatever advantage could be derived from
+prompt and speedy action.
+
+"Go we forth at once," said he,--"go, as becomes us, in our robes of
+state, and with the insignia of the city.  Never be it said that the
+guardians of the city of London could neither defend with spirit, nor
+make terms with honour.  We give entrance to Lord Warwick.  Well,
+then, it must be our own free act.  Come!  Officers of our court,
+advance."
+
+"Stay a bit, stay a bit," whispered Stokton, digging sharp claws into
+Alwyn's arm; "let them go first,--a word with you, cunning Nick,--a
+word."
+
+Master Stokton, despite the tremor of his nerves, was a man of such
+wealth and substance, that Alwyn might well take the request, thus
+familiarly made, as a compliment not to be received discourteously;
+moreover, he had his own reasons for hanging back from a procession
+which his rank in the city did not require him to join.
+
+While, therefore, the mayor and the other dignitaries left the hall
+with as much state and order as if not going to meet an invading army,
+but to join a holiday festival, Nicholas and Stokton lingered behind.
+
+"Master Alwyn," said Stokton, then, with a sly wink of his eye, "you
+have this day done yourself great credit; you will rise, I have my eye
+on you!  I have a daughter, I have a daughter!  Aha! a lad like you
+may come to great things!"
+
+"I am much bounden to you, Master Stokton," returned Alwyn, somewhat
+abstractedly; "but what's your will?"
+
+"My will!--hum, I say, Nicholas, what's your advice?  Quite right not
+to go to blows.  Odds costards! that mayor is a very tiger!  But don't
+you think it would be wiser not to join this procession?  Edward IV.,
+an' he ever come back, has a long memory.  He deals at my ware, too,--
+a good customer at a mercer's; and, Lord! how much money he owes the
+city!--hum!--I would not seem ungrateful."
+
+"But if you go not out with the rest, there be other mercers who will
+have King Henry's countenance and favour; and it is easy to see that a
+new court will make vast consumption in mercery."
+
+Master Stokton looked puzzled.
+
+"That were a hugeous pity, good Nicholas; and, certes, there is Wat
+Smith, in Eastgate, who would cheat that good King Henry, poor man!
+which were a shame to the city; but, on the other hand, the Yorkists
+mostly pay on the nail (except King Edward, God save him!), and the
+Lancastrians are as poor as mice.  Moreover, King Henry is a meek man,
+and does not avenge; King Edward, a hot and a stern man, and may call
+it treason to go with the Red Rose!  I wish I knew how to decide!  I
+have a daughter, an only daughter,--a buxom lass, and well dowered.  I
+would I had a sharp son-in-law to advise me!"
+
+"Master Stokton, in one word, then, he never goes far wrong who can
+run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.  Good-day to you, I have
+business elsewhere."
+
+So saying, Nicholas rather hastily shook off the mercer's quivering
+fingers, and hastened out of the hall.
+
+"Verily," murmured the disconsolate Stokton, "run with the hare,
+quotha!--that is, go with King Edward; but hunt with the hounds,--that
+is, go with King Henry.  Odds costards; it's not so easily done by a
+plain man not bred in the North.  I'd best go--home, and do nothing!"
+
+With that, musing and bewildered, the poor man sneaked out, and was
+soon lost amidst the murmuring, gathering, and swaying crowds, many
+amongst which were as much perplexed as himself.
+
+In the mean while, with his cloak muffled carefully round his face,
+and with a long, stealthy, gliding stride, Alwyn made his way through
+the streets, gained the river, entered a boat in waiting for him, and
+arrived at last at the palace of the Tower.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF THE EARL--THE ROYAL CAPTIVE IN THE TOWER--THE
+MEETING BETWEEN KING-MAKER AND KING.
+
+All in the chambers of the metropolitan fortress exhibited the
+greatest confusion and dismay.  The sentinels, it is true, were still
+at their posts, men-at-arms at the outworks, the bombards were loaded,
+the flag of Edward IV. still waved aloft from the battlements; but the
+officers of the fortress and the captains of its soldiery were, some
+assembled in the old hall, pale with fear, and wrangling with each
+other; some had fled, none knew whither; some had gone avowedly and
+openly to join the invading army.
+
+Through this tumultuous and feeble force, Nicholas Alwyn was conducted
+by a single faithful servitor of the queen's (by whom he was
+expected); and one glance of his quick eye, as he passed along,
+convinced him of the justice of his counsels.  He arrived at last, by
+a long and winding stair, at one of the loftiest chambers, in one of
+the loftiest towers, usually appropriated to the subordinate officers
+of the household.
+
+And there, standing by the open casement, commanding some extended
+view of the noisy and crowded scene beyond, both on stream and land,
+he saw the queen of the fugitive monarch.  By her side was the Lady
+Scrope, her most familiar friend and confidant, her three infant
+children, Elizabeth, Mary, and Cicely, grouped round her knees,
+playing with each other, and unconscious of the terrors of the times;
+and apart from the rest stood the Duchess of Bedford, conferring
+eagerly with Friar Bungey, whom she had summoned in haste, to know if
+his art could not yet prevail over enemies merely mortal.
+
+The servitor announced Alwyn, and retired; the queen turned--"What
+news, Master Alwyn?  Quick!  What tidings from the lord mayor?"
+
+"Gracious my queen and lady," said Alwyn, falling on his knees, "you
+have but one course to pursue.  Below yon casement lies your barge, to
+the right see the round gray tower of Westminster Sanctuary; you have
+time yet, and but time!"
+
+The old Duchess of Bedford turned her sharp, bright, gray eyes from
+the pale and trembling friar to the goldsmith, but was silent.  The
+queen stood aghast. "Mean you," she faltered, at last, "that the city
+of London forsakes the king?  Shame on the cravens!"
+
+"Not cravens, my lady and queen," said Alwyn, rising.  "He must have
+iron nails that scratches a bear,--and the white bear above all.  The
+king has fled, the barons have fled, the soldiers have fled, the
+captains have fled,--the citizens of London alone fly not; but there
+is nothing save life and property left to guard."
+
+"Is this thy boasted influence with the commons and youths of the
+city?"
+
+"My humble influence, may it please your Grace (I say it now openly,
+and I will say it a year hence, when King Edward will hold his court
+in these halls once again), my influence, such as it is, has been used
+to save lives which resistance would waste in vain.  Alack, alack!
+'No gaping against an oven,' gracious lady!  Your barge is below.
+Again I say there is yet time,--when the bell tolls the next hour that
+time will be past!"
+
+"Then Jesu defend these children!" said Elizabeth, bending over her
+infants, and weeping bitterly; "I will go!"
+
+"Hold!" said the Duchess of Bedford, "men desert us, but do the
+spirits also forsake us?--Speak, friar! canst thou yet do aught for
+us?--and if not, thinkest thou it is the right hour to yield and fly?"
+
+"Daughter," said the friar, whose terror might have moved pity, "as I
+said before, thank yourself.  This Warner, this--in short, the lesser
+magician hath been aided and cockered to countervail the greater, as I
+forewarned.  Fly! run! fly!  Verily and indeed it is the prosperest of
+all times to save ourselves; and the stars and the book and my
+familiar all call out, 'Off and away!'"
+
+"'Fore heaven!" exclaimed Alwyn, who had hitherto been dumb with
+astonishment at this singular interlude, "sith he who hath shipped the
+devil must make the best of him, thou art for once an honest man and a
+wise counsellor.  Hark! the second gun!  The earl is at the gates of
+the city!"
+
+The queen lingered no longer; she caught her youngest child in her
+arms; the Lady Scrope followed with the two others.  "Come, follow,
+quick, Master Alwyn," said the duchess, who, now that she was
+compelled to abandon the world of prediction and soothsaying, became
+thoroughly the sagacious, plotting, ready woman of this life; "come,
+your face and name will be of service to us, an' we meet with
+obstruction."
+
+Before Alwyn could reply, the door was thrown abruptly open, and
+several of the officers of the household rushed pell-mell into the
+royal presence.
+
+"Gracious queen!" cried many voices at once, each with a different
+sentence of fear and warning, "fly!  We cannot depend on the soldiers;
+the populace are up,--they shout for King Henry; Dr. Godard is
+preaching against you at St. Paul's Cross; Sir Geoffrey Gates has come
+out of the sanctuary, and with him all the miscreants and outlaws; the
+mayor is now with the rebels!  Fly! the sanctuary, the sanctuary!"
+
+"And who amongst you is of highest rank?" asked the duchess, calmly;
+for Elizabeth, completely overwhelmed, seemed incapable of speech or
+movement.
+
+"I, Giles de Malvoisin, knight banneret," said an old warrior armed
+cap-a-pie, who had fought in France under the hero Talbot.
+
+"Then, sir," said the duchess, with majesty, "to your hands I confide
+the eldest daughter of your king.  Lead on!--we follow you.
+Elizabeth, lean on me."
+
+With this, supporting Elizabeth, and leading her second grandchild,
+the duchess left the chamber.
+
+The friar followed amidst the crowd, for well he knew that if the
+soldiers of Warwick once caught hold of him, he had fared about as
+happily as the fox amidst the dogs; and Alwyn, forgotten in the
+general confusion, hastened to Adam's chamber.
+
+The old man, blessing any cause that induced his patroness to dispense
+with his astrological labours and restored him to the care of his
+Eureka, was calmly and quietly employed in repairing the mischief
+effected by the bungling friar; and Sibyll, who at the first alarm had
+flown to his retreat, joyfully hailed the entrance of the friendly
+goldsmith.
+
+Alwyn was indeed perplexed what to advise, for the principal sanctuary
+would, no doubt, be crowded by ruffians of the worst character; and
+the better lodgments which that place, a little town in itself, [the
+Sanctuary of Westminster was fortified] contained, be already
+preoccupied by the Yorkists of rank; and the smaller sanctuaries were
+still more liable to the same objection.  Moreover, if Adam should be
+recognized by any of the rabble that would meet them by the way, his
+fate, by the summary malice of a mob, was certain.  After all, the
+Tower would be free from the populace; and as soon as, by a few rapid
+questions, Alwyn learned from Sibyll that she had reason to hope her
+father would find protection with Lord Warwick, and called to mind
+that Marmaduke Nevile was necessarily in the earl's train, he advised
+them to remain quiet and concealed in their apartments, and promised
+to see and provide for them the moment the Tower was yielded up to the
+new government.
+
+The counsel suited both Sibyll and Warner.  Indeed, the philosopher
+could not very easily have been induced to separate himself again from
+the beloved Eureka; and Sibyll was more occupied at that hour with
+thoughts and prayers for the beloved Hastings,--afar, a wanderer and
+an exile,--than with the turbulent events amidst which her lot was
+cast.
+
+In the storms of a revolution which convulsed a kingdom and hurled to
+the dust a throne, Love saw but a single object, Science but its
+tranquil toil.  Beyond the realm of men lies ever with its joy and
+sorrow, its vicissitude and change, the domain of the human heart.  In
+the revolution, the toy of the scholar was restored to him; in the
+revolution, the maiden mourned her lover.  In the movement of the
+mass, each unit hath its separate passion.  The blast that rocks the
+trees shakes a different world in every leaf.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE TOWER IN COMMOTION.
+
+On quitting the Tower, Alwyn regained the boat, and took his way to
+the city; and here, whatever credit that worthy and excellent
+personage may lose in certain eyes, his historian is bound to confess
+that his anxiety for Sibyll did not entirely distract his attention
+from interest or ambition.  To become the head of his class, to rise
+to the first honours of his beloved city of London, had become to
+Nicholas Alwyn a hope and aspiration which made as much a part of his
+being as glory to a warrior, power to a king, a Eureka to a scholar;
+and, though more mechanically than with any sordid calculation or
+self-seeking, Nicholas Alwyn repaired to his ware in the Chepe.  The
+streets, when he landed, already presented a different appearance from
+the disorder and tumult noticeable when he had before passed them.
+The citizens now had decided what course to adopt; and though the
+shops, or rather booths, were carefully closed, streamers of silk,
+cloth of arras and gold, were hung from the upper casements; the
+balconies were crowded with holiday gazers; the fickle populace (the
+same herd that had hooted the meek Henry when led to the Tower) were
+now shouting, "A Warwick!" "A Clarence!" and pouring throng after
+throng, to gaze upon the army, which, with the mayor and aldermen, had
+already entered the city.  Having seen to the security of his costly
+goods, and praised his apprentices duly for their care of his
+interests, and their abstinence from joining the crowd, Nicholas then
+repaired to the upper story of his house, and set forth from his
+casements and balcony the richest stuffs he possessed.  However, there
+was his own shrewd, sarcastic smile on his firm lips, as he said to
+his apprentices, "When these are done with, lay them carefully by
+against Edward of York's re-entry."
+
+Meanwhile, preceded by trumpets, drums, and heralds, the Earl of
+Warwick and his royal son-in-law rode into the shouting city.  Behind
+came the litter of the Duchess of Clarence, attended by the Earl of
+Oxford, Lord Fitzhugh, the Lords Stanley and Shrewsbury, Sir Robert de
+Lytton, and a princely cortege of knights, squires, and nobles; while,
+file upon file, rank upon rank, followed the long march of the
+unresisted armament.
+
+Warwick, clad in complete armour of Milan steel,--save the helmet,
+which was borne behind him by his squire,--mounted on his own noble
+Saladin, preserved upon a countenance so well suited to command the
+admiration of a populace the same character as heretofore of manly
+majesty and lofty frankness.  But to a nearer and more searching gaze
+than was likely to be bent upon him in such an hour, the dark, deep
+traces of care, anxiety, and passion might have been detected in the
+lines which now thickly intersected the forehead, once so smooth and
+furrowless; and his kingly eye, not looking, as of old, right forward
+as he moved, cast unquiet, searching glances about him and around, as
+he bowed his bare head from side to side of the welcoming thousands.
+
+A far greater change, to outward appearance, was visible in the fair
+young face of the Duke of Clarence.  His complexion, usually sanguine
+and blooming, like his elder brother's, was now little less pale than
+that of Richard.  A sullen, moody, discontented expression, which not
+all the heartiness of the greetings he received could dispel,
+contrasted forcibly with the good-humoured, laughing recklessness,
+which had once drawn a "God bless him!" from all on whom rested his
+light-blue joyous eye.  He was unarmed, save by a corselet richly
+embossed with gold.  His short manteline of crimson velvet, his hosen
+of white cloth laced with gold, and his low horseman's boots of
+Spanish leather curiously carved and broidered, with long golden
+spurs; his plumed and jewelled cap; his white charger with housings
+enriched with pearls and blazing with cloth-of-gold; his broad collar
+of precious stones, with the order of St. George; his general's
+truncheon raised aloft, and his Plantagenet banner borne by the herald
+over his royal head, caught the eyes of the crowd only the more to
+rivet them on an aspect ill fitting the triumph of a bloodless
+victory.  At his left hand, where the breadth of the streets
+permitted, rode Henry Lee, the mayor, uttering no word, unless
+appealed to, and then answering but with chilling reverence and dry
+monosyllables.
+
+A narrow winding in the streets, which left Warwick and Clarence alone
+side by side, gave the former the opportunity he had desired.
+
+"How, prince and son," he said in a hollow whisper, "is it with this
+brow of care that thou saddenest our conquest, and enterest the
+capital we gain without a blow?"
+
+"By Saint George!" answered Clarence, sullenly, and in the same tone,
+"thinkest thou it chafes not the son of Richard of York, after such
+toils and bloodshed, to minister to the dethronement of his kin and
+the restoration of the foe of his race?"
+
+"Thou shouldst have thought of that before," returned Warwick, but
+with sadness and pity in the reproach.
+
+"Ay, before Edward of Lancaster was made my lord and brother,"
+retorted Clarence, bitterly.
+
+"Hush!" said the earl, "and calm thy brow.  Not thus didst thou speak
+at Amboise; either thou wert then less frank or more generous.  But
+regrets are vain: we have raised the whirlwind, and must rule it."
+
+And with that, in the action of a man who would escape his own
+thoughts, Warwick made his black steed demivolte; and the crowd
+shouted again the louder at the earl's gallant horsemanship, and
+Clarence's dazzling collar of jewels.
+
+While thus the procession of the victors, the nominal object of all
+this mighty and sudden revolution--of this stir and uproar, of these
+shining arms and flaunting banners, of this heaven or hell in the deep
+passions of men--still remained in his prison-chamber of the Tower, a
+true type of the thing factions contend for; absent, insignificant,
+unheeded, and, save by a few of the leaders and fanatical priests,
+absolutely forgotten!
+
+To this solitary chamber we are now transported; yet solitary is a
+word of doubtful propriety; for though the royal captive was alone, so
+far as the human species make up a man's companionship and solace,
+though the faithful gentlemen, Manning, Bedle, and Allerton, had, on
+the news of Warwick's landing, been thrust from his chamber, and were
+now in the ranks of his new and strange defenders, yet power and
+jealousy had not left his captivity all forsaken.  There was still the
+starling in its cage, and the fat, asthmatic spaniel still wagged its
+tail at the sound of its master's voice, or the rustle of his long
+gown.  And still from the ivory crucifix gleamed the sad and holy face
+of the God, present alway, and who, by faith and patience, linketh
+evermore grief to joy,--but earth to heaven.
+
+The august prisoner had not been so utterly cut off from all knowledge
+of the outer life as to be ignorant of some unwonted and important
+stir in the fortress and the city.  The squire who had brought him his
+morning meal had been so agitated as to excite the captive's
+attention, and had then owned that the Earl of Warwick had proclaimed
+Henry king, and was on his march to London.  But neither the squire
+nor any of the officers of the Tower dared release the illustrious
+captive, or even remove him as yet to the state apartments vacated by
+Elizabeth.  They knew not what might be the pleasure of the stout earl
+or the Duke of Clarence, and feared over-officiousness might be their
+worst crime.  But naturally imagining that Henry's first command, at
+the new position of things, might be for liberty, and perplexed
+whether to yield or refuse, they absented themselves from his summons,
+and left the whole tower in which he was placed actually deserted.
+
+From his casement the king could see, however, the commotion, and the
+crowds upon the wharf and river, with the gleam of arms and banners;
+and hear the sounds of "A Warwick!" "A Clarence!"  "Long live good
+Henry VI.!"  A strange combination of names, which disturbed and
+amazed him much!  But by degrees the unwonted excitement of perplexity
+and surprise settled back into the calm serenity of his most gentle
+mind and temper.  That trust in an all-directing Providence, to which
+he had schooled himself, had (if we may so say with reverence) driven
+his beautiful soul into the opposite error, so fatal to the affairs of
+life,--the error that deadens and benumbs the energy of free will and
+the noble alertness of active duty.  Why strain and strive for the
+things of this world?  God would order all for the best.  Alas! God
+hath placed us in this world, each, from king to peasant, with nerves
+and hearts and blood and passions to struggle with our kind; and, no
+matter how heavenly the goal, to labour with the million in the race!
+
+"Forsooth," murmured the king, as, his hands clasped behind him, he
+paced slowly to and fro the floor, "this ill world seemeth but a
+feather, blown about by the winds, and never to be at rest. Hark!
+Warwick and King Henry,--the lion and the lamb!  Alack, and we are
+fallen on no Paradise, where such union were not a miracle!  Foolish
+bird!"--and with a pitying smile upon that face whose holy sweetness
+might have disarmed a fiend, he paused before the cage and
+contemplated his fellow-captive--"foolish bird, the uneasiness and
+turmoil without have reached even to thee.  Thou beatest thy wings
+against the wires, thou turnest thy bright eyes to mine restlessly.
+Why?  Pantest thou to be free,  silly one, that the hawk may swoop on
+its defenceless prey?  Better, perhaps, the cage for thee, and the
+prison for thy master.  Well, out if thou wilt!  Here at least thou
+art safe!" and opening the cage, the starling flew to his bosom, and
+nestled there, with its small clear voice mimicking the human sound,--
+
+"Poor Henry, poor Henry!  Wicked men, poor Henry!"
+
+The king bowed his meek head over his favourite, and the fat spaniel,
+jealous of the monopolized caress, came waddling towards its master,
+with a fond whine, and looked up at him with eyes that expressed more
+of faith and love than Edward of York, the ever wooing and ever wooed,
+had read in the gaze of woman.
+
+With those companions, and with thoughts growing more and more
+composed and rapt from all that had roused and vexed his interest in
+the forenoon, Henry remained till the hour had long passed for his
+evening meal.  Surprised at last by a negligence which (to do his
+jailers justice) had never before occurred, and finding no response to
+his hand-bell, no attendant in the anteroom, the outer doors locked as
+usual, but the sentinel's tread in the court below hushed and still, a
+cold thrill for a moment shot through his blood.--"Was he left for
+hunger to do its silent work?"  Slowly he bent his way from the outer
+rooms back to his chamber; and, as he passed the casement again, he
+heard, though far in the distance, through the dim air of the
+deepening twilight, the cry of "Long live King Henry!"
+
+This devotion without, this neglect within, was a wondrous contrast!
+Meanwhile the spaniel, with that instinct of fidelity which divines
+the wants of the master, had moved snuffling and smelling round and
+round the chambers, till it stopped and scratched at a cupboard in the
+anteroom, and then with a joyful bark flew back to the king, and
+taking the hem of his gown between its teeth, led him towards the spot
+it had discovered; and there, in truth, a few of those small cakes,
+usually served up for the night's livery, had been carelessly left.
+They sufficed for the day's food, and the king, the dog, and the
+starling shared them peacefully together.  This done, Henry carefully
+replaced his bird in its cage, bade the dog creep to the hearth and
+lie still; passed on to his little oratory, with the relics of cross
+and saint strewed around the solemn image,--and in prayer forgot the
+world!  Meanwhile darkness set in: the streets had grown deserted,
+save where in some nooks and by-lanes gathered groups of the soldiery;
+but for the most part the discipline in which Warwick held his army
+had dismissed those stern loiterers to the various quarters provided
+for them, and little remained to remind the peaceful citizens that a
+throne had been uprooted, and a revolution consummated, that eventful
+day.
+
+It was at this time that a tall man, closely wrapped in his large
+horseman's cloak, passed alone through the streets and gained the
+Tower.  At the sound of his voice by the great gate, the sentinel
+started in alarm; a few moments more, and all left to guard the
+fortress were gathered round him.  From these he singled out one of
+the squires who usually attended Henry, and bade him light his steps
+to the king's chamber.  As in that chamber Henry rose from his knees,
+he saw the broad red light of a torch flickering under the chinks of
+the threshold; he heard the slow tread of approaching footsteps; the
+spaniel uttered a low growl, its eyes sparkling; the door opened, and
+the torch borne behind by the squire, and raised aloft so that its
+glare threw a broad light over the whole chamber, brought into full
+view the dark and haughty countenance of the Earl of Warwick.
+
+The squire, at a gesture from the earl, lighted the sconces on the
+wall, the tapers on the table, and quickly vanished.  King-maker and
+king were alone!  At the first sight of Warwick, Henry had turned
+pale, and receded a few paces, with one hand uplifted in adjuration or
+command, while with the other he veiled his eyes,--whether that this
+startled movement came from the weakness of bodily nerves, much
+shattered by sickness and confinement, or from the sudden emotions
+called forth by the aspect of one who had wrought him calamities so
+dire.  But the craven's terror in the presence of a living foe was,
+with all his meekness, all his holy abhorrence of wrath and warfare,
+as unknown to that royal heart as to the high blood of his hero-sire.
+And so, after a brief pause, and a thought that took the shape of
+prayer, not for safety from peril, but for grace to forgive the past,
+Henry VI. advanced to Warwick, who still stood dumb by the threshold,
+combating with his own mingled and turbulent emotions of pride and
+shame, and said, in a voice majestic even from its very mildness,--
+
+"What tale of new woe and evil hath the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick
+come to announce to the poor captive who was once a king?"
+
+"Forgive me!  Forgiveness, Henry, my lord,--forgiveness!" exclaimed
+Warwick, falling on his knee.  The meek reproach; the touching words;
+the mien and visage altered, since last beheld, from manhood into age;
+the gray hairs and bended form of the king, went at once to that proud
+heart; and as the earl bent over the wan, thin hand resigned to his
+lips, a tear upon its surface out-sparkled all the jewels that it
+wore.
+
+"Yet no," continued the earl (impatient, as proud men are, to hurry
+from repentance to atonement, for the one is of humiliation and the
+other of pride),--"yet no, my liege, not now do I crave thy pardon.
+No; but when begirt, in the halls of thine ancestors, with the peers
+of England, the victorious banner of Saint George waving above the
+throne which thy servant hath rebuilt,--then, when the trumpets are
+sounding thy rights without the answer of a foe; then, when from shore
+to shore of fair England the shout of thy people echoes to the vault
+of heaven,--then will Warwick kneel again to King Henry, and sue for
+the pardon he hath not ignobly won!
+
+"Alack, sir," said the king, with accents of mournful yet half-
+reproving kindness, "it was not amidst trump and banners that the Son
+of God set mankind the exemplar and pattern of charity to foes.  When
+thy hand struck the spurs from my heel, when thou didst parade me
+through the booting crowd to this solitary cell, then, Warwick, I
+forgave thee, and prayed to Heaven for pardon for thee, if thou didst
+wrong me,--for myself, if a king's fault had deserved a subject's
+harshness.  Rise, Sir Earl; our God is a jealous God, and the attitude
+of worship is for Him alone."
+
+Warwick rose from his knee; and the king, perceiving and
+compassionating the struggle which shook the strong man's breast, laid
+his hand on the earl's shoulder, and said, "Peace be with thee!--thou
+hast done me no real harm.  I have been as happy in these walls as in
+the green parks of Windsor; happier than in the halls of state or in
+the midst of wrangling armies.  What tidings now?"
+
+"My liege, is it possible that you know not that Edward is a fugitive
+and a beggar, and that Heaven hath permitted me to avenge at once your
+injuries and my own?  This day, without a blow, I have regained your
+city of London; its streets are manned with my army.  From the council
+of peers and warriors and prelates assembled at my house, I have
+stolen hither alone and in secret, that I might be the first to hail
+your Grace's restoration to the throne of Henry V."
+
+The king's face so little changed at this intelligence, that its calm
+sadness almost enraged the impetuous Warwick, and with difficulty he
+restrained from giving utterance to the thought, "He is not worthy of
+a throne who cares so little to possess it!"
+
+"Well-a-day!" said Henry, sighing, "Heaven then hath sore trials yet
+in store for mine old age!  Tray, Tray!" and stooping, he gently
+patted his dog, who kept watch at his feet, still glaring suspiciously
+at Warwick, "we are both too old for the chase now!--Will you be
+seated, my lord?"
+
+"Trust me," said the earl, as he obeyed the command, having first set
+chair and footstool for the king, who listened to him with downcast
+eyes and his head drooping on his bosom--"trust me, your later days,
+my liege, will be free from the storms of your youth.  All chance of
+Edward's hostility is expired.  Your alliance, though I seem boastful
+so to speak,--your alliance with one in whom the people can confide
+for some skill in war, and some more profound experience of the habits
+and tempers of your subjects than your former councillors could
+possess, will leave your honoured leisure free for the holy
+meditations it affects; and your glory, as your safety, shall be the
+care of men who can awe this rebellious world."
+
+"Alliance!" said the king, who had caught but that one word; "of what
+speakest thou, Sir Earl?"
+
+"These missives will explain all, my liege; this letter from my lady
+the Queen Margaret, and this from your gracious son, the Prince of
+Wales."
+
+"Edward! my Edward!" exclaimed the king, with a father's burst of
+emotion.  "Thou hast seen him, then,--bears he his health well, is he
+of cheer and heart?"
+
+"He is strong and fair, and full of promise, and brave as his
+grandsire's sword."
+
+"And knows he--knows he well--that we all are the potter's clay in the
+hands of God?"
+
+"My liege," said Warwick, embarrassed, "he has as much devotion as
+befits a Christian knight and a goodly prince."
+
+"Ah," sighed the king, "ye men of arms have strange thoughts on these
+matters;" and cutting the silk of the letters, he turned from the
+warrior.  Shading his face with his hand, the earl darted his keen
+glance on the features of the king, as, drawing near to the table, the
+latter read the communications which announced his new connection with
+his ancient foe.
+
+But Henry was at first so affected by the sight of Margaret's well-
+known hand, that he thrice put down her letter and wiped the moisture
+from his eyes.
+
+"My poor Margaret, how thou hast suffered!" he murmured; "these very
+characters are less firm and bold than they were.  Well, well!" and at
+last he betook himself resolutely to the task.  Once or twice his
+countenance changed, and he uttered an exclamation of surprise.  But
+the proposition of a marriage between Prince Edward and the Lady Anne
+did not revolt his forgiving mind, as it had the haughty and stern
+temper of his consort.  And when he had concluded his son's epistle,
+full of the ardour of his love and the spirit of his youth, the king
+passed his left hand over his brow, and then extending his right to
+Warwick, said, in accents which trembled with emotion, "Serve my son,
+since he is thine, too; give peace to this distracted kingdom, repair
+my errors, press not hard upon those who contend against us, and Jesu
+and His saints will bless this bond!"
+
+The earl's object, perhaps, in seeking a meeting with Henry so private
+and unwitnessed, had been that none, not even his brother, might
+hearken to the reproaches he anticipated to receive, or say hereafter
+that he heard Warwick, returned as victor and avenger to his native
+land, descend, in the hour of triumph, to extenuation and excuse.  So
+affronted, imperilled, or to use his own strong word, "so despaired,"
+had he been in the former rule of Henry, that his intellect, which,
+however vigorous in his calmer moods, was liable to be obscured and
+dulled by his passions, had half confounded the gentle king with his
+ferocious wife and stern councillors, and he had thought he never
+could have humbled himself to the man, even so far as knighthood's
+submission to Margaret's sex had allowed him to the woman.  But the
+sweetness of Henry's manners and disposition, the saint-like dignity
+which he had manifested throughout this painful interview, and the
+touching grace and trustful generosity of his last words,--words which
+consummated the earl's large projects of ambition and revenge,--had
+that effect upon Warwick which the preaching of some holy man,
+dwelling upon the patient sanctity of the Saviour, had of old on a
+grim Crusader, all incapable himself of practising such meek
+excellence, and yet all moved and penetrated by its loveliness in
+another; and, like such Crusader, the representation of all mildest
+and most forgiving singularly stirred up in the warrior's mind images
+precisely the reverse,--images of armed valour and stern vindication,
+as if where the Cross was planted sprang from the earth the standard
+and the war-horse!
+
+"Perish your foes!  May war and storm scatter them as the chaff!  My
+liege, my royal master," continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering
+voice, "why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before?  Why stood
+so many between Warwick's devotion and a king so worthy to command it?
+How poor, beside thy great-hearted fortitude and thy Christian
+heroism, seems the savage valour of false Edward!  Shame upon one who
+can betray the trust thou hast placed in him!  Never will I!--Never!
+I swear it!  No! though all England desert thee, I will stand alone
+with my breast of mail before thy throne!  Oh, would that my triumph
+had been less peaceful and less bloodless! would that a hundred
+battlefields were yet left to prove how deeply--deeply in his heart of
+hearts--Warwick feels the forgiveness of his king!"
+
+"Not so, not so, not so! not battlefields, Warwick!" said Henry.  "Ask
+not to serve the king by shedding one subject's blood."
+
+"Your pious will be obeyed!" replied Warwick.  "We will see if mercy
+can effect in others what thy pardon effects in me.  And now, my
+liege, no longer must these walls confine thee.  The chambers of the
+palace await their sovereign.  What ho, there!" and going to the door
+he threw it open, and agreeably to the orders he had given below, all
+the officers left in the fortress stood crowded together in the small
+anteroom, bareheaded, with tapers in their hands, to conduct the
+monarch to the halls of his conquered foe.
+
+At the sudden sight of the earl, these men, struck involuntarily and
+at once by the grandeur of his person and his animated aspect, burst
+forth with the rude retainer's cry, "A Warwick! a Warwick!"
+
+"Silence!" thundered the earl's deep voice.  "Who names the subject in
+the sovereign's presence?  Behold your king!"  The men, abashed by the
+reproof, bowed their heads and sank on their knees, as Warwick took a
+taper from the table, to lead the way from the prison.
+
+Then Henry turned slowly, and gazed with a lingering eye upon the
+walls which even sorrow and solitude had endeared.  The little
+oratory, the crucifix, the relics, the embers burning low on the
+hearth, the rude time-piece,--all took to his thoughtful eye an almost
+human aspect of melancholy and omen; and the bird, roused, whether by
+the glare of the lights, or the recent shout of the men, opened its
+bright eyes, and fluttering restlessly to and fro, shrilled out its
+favourite sentence, "Poor Henry! poor Henry!--wicked men!--who would
+be a king?"
+
+"Thou hearest it, Warwick?" said Henry, shaking his head.
+
+"Could an eagle speak, it would have another cry than the starling,"
+returned the earl, with a proud smile.
+
+"Why, look you," said the king, once more releasing the bird, which
+settled on his wrist, "the eagle had broken his heart in the narrow
+cage, the eagle had been no comforter for a captive; it is these
+gentler ones that love and soothe us best in our adversities.  Tray,
+Tray, fawn not now, sirrah, or I shall think thou hast been false in
+thy fondness heretofore!  Cousin, I attend you."
+
+And with his bird on his wrist, his dog at his heels, Henry VI.
+followed the earl to the illuminated hall of Edward, where the table
+was spread for the royal repast, and where his old friends, Manning,
+Bedle, and Allerton, stood weeping for joy; while from the gallery
+raised aloft, the musicians gave forth the rough and stirring melody
+which had gradually fallen out of usage, but which was once the
+Norman's national air, and which the warlike Margaret of Anjou had
+retaught her minstrels,--"THE BATTLE HYMN OF ROLLO."
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST OF THE BARONS, V10 ***
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