 | The knights of England, France, and Scotland |  |
THE ERRING ARROW.
When the navis and merle are singing,
When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
And the hunter's horn is ringing.”
—Lady of the Lake.
As beautiful a summer's morning as ever chased the stars
from heaven, was dawning over that wide tract of waste and
woodland, which still, though many a century has now mossed
over the ancestral oaks which then were in their lusty prime,
retains the name by which it was at that day styled appropriately
— the “New Forest.” Few years had then elapsed since
the first Norman lord of England had quenched the fires that
burned in thirty hamlets; had desecrated God's own altars, making
the roofless aisles of many a parish church the haunt of
the grim wolf or antlered red-deer; turning fair fields and cultured
vales to barren and desolate wastes — to gratify his furious
passion for that sport which has so justly been entitled the
mimicry of warfare. Few years had then elapsed, yet not a
symptom of their old fertility could now be traced in the wild
plains waving with fern, and overrun with copsewood, broom,
and brambles; unless it might be found in the profuse luxuriance
with which this thriftless crop had overspread the champaign
once smiling like a goodly garden with every meet production
for the sustenance of man.
It was, as has been said, as beautiful a summer's morning as
ever eye of man beheld. The sun, which had just raised the
verge of his great orb above the low horizon, was checkering
the mossy greensward with long, fantastic lines of light and
shadow, and tinging the gnarled limbs of the huge oaks with
ruddy gold; the dew, which lay abundantly on every blade of
grass and every bending wild-flower, had not yet felt his power,
nor raised a single mist-wreath to veil the brightness of the firmament;
nor was the landscape, that lay there steeped in the
lustre of the glowing skies, less lovely than the dawn that
waked above it: long sylvan avenues sweeping for miles
through every variation of the wildest forest-scenery — here
traversing in easy curves wide undulations clothed with the
purple heather; here sinking downward to the brink of sheets
of limpid water; now running straight through lines of mighty
trees, and now completely overbowered as they dived through
brakes and dingles, where the birch and holly grew so thickly
mingled with the prickly furze and creeping eglantine as to
make twilight of the hottest noontide. Such were the leading
features of the country which had most deeply felt, and has
borne down to later days most evident memorials of, the Norman's
tyranny.
Deeply embosomed in these delicious solitudes — surrounded
by its flanking walls, and moat brimmed from a neighboring
streamlet, with barbican and ballium, and all the elaborate defences
that marked the architecture of the conquering race —
stood Malwood keep, the favorite residence of Rufus, no less
than it had been of his more famous sire. Here, early as was
the hour, all was already full of life, full of the joyous and inspiriting
confusion that still characterizes, though in a less degree
than in those days of feudal pomp, the preparations for
the chase. Tall yeomen hurried to and fro — some leading
powerful and blooded chargers, which reared, and pawed the
struggling to restrain the mighty bloodhounds which bayed and
strove indignantly against the leash; while others, lying in
scattered groups upon the esplanade of level turf, furbished
their cloth-yard shafts, or strung the six-foot bows, which, for
the first time, had drawn blood in England upon the fatal field
of Hastings.
It might be seen, upon the instant, it was no private retinue
that mustered to the “mystery of forests,” as in the quaint
phrase of the day the noble sport was designated. A hundred
horses, at the least, of the most costly and admired breeds, were
there paraded: the huge, coal-black destrier of Flanders, limbed
like an elephant, but with a coat that might have shamed the
richest velvet by its sleekness; the light and graceful Andalusian,
with here and there a Spaniard, springy, and fleet, and
fearless — while dogs, in numbers infinitely greater, and of races
yet more various, made up the moving picture: bloodhounds to
track the wounded quarry by their unerring scent; slowhounds
to force him from his lair; gazehounds and lymmers to outstrip
him on the level plain; mastiffs to bay the boar, “crook-kneed
and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;” with terriers to unkennel
beasts of earth, and spaniels to rouse the fowls of air. Nor
were these all, for birds themselves were there, trained to make
war on their own race: the long-winged hawks of Norway,
with lanners from the isle of Man; merlins, and jerfalcons, and
gosshawks. No tongue could tell the beauty of the creatures
thus assembled: some scarcely half-reclaimed, and showing
their wild nature at every glance of their quick, flashing eyes;
some docile and affectionate, and in all things dependent upon
man, to whom, despite caprice, and cruelty, and coldness, they
are more faithful in his need than he, proud though he be, dare
boast himself toward his fellow. No fancy could imagine the
superb and lavish gorgeousness of their equipment.
A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant
a hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were
in the stirrup. Again it rang, longer and keener than before,
and every forester was in his saddle; while from the low-browed
arch, bending their stately heads quite to their saddle-bows,
over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights rode forth, the
followers and comrades of their king.
Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite
proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe,
and agile, there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or
yeoman, who could display a form so fitted for the union of activity
with strength, of beauty with endurance, as could the
second William. His hair, from which he had derived his
famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and uncomely hue
which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and yellowish
brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head;
his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were
well formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and
restless, and at times even downcast expression; and the whole
aspect of the face told many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and
passion — suspicion that might be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness
that surely would be lashed by any opposition to violent
and reckless fury. But now the furrows on the brow were all
relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into temporary
blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French;
“the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel,
shall we two company to-day, and gage our luck against
these gay gallants?”
“Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed.
A tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein,
bearing a bow which not an archer in the train could
bend. “Right jovially will we — an' they dare cope with us!
What sayest thou, De Beauchamp — darest thou wager thy
against his grace and me?”
“Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed;
“thy shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow
save thine!”
“To his, my liege?” cried Beauchamp, “thou yield to his!
Never drew Walter Tyrrel so true a string as thou; he lacks
the sleight, I trow, so ekes it out with strength! Tyrrel must
hold him pleased if he rate second i' the field.”
“How now, Sir Walter?” shouted the king; “hearest thou
this bold De Beauchamp, and wilt thou yield the bucklers? —
not thou, I warrant me, though it be to thy king!”
“So please your highness,” Tyrrel answered; “'tis but a
sleight to 'scape our wager — 'scaping the shame beside of
yielding! He deems us over-strong for him, and so would
part us!”
“Nay, by my halydom,” Rufus replied with a gay smile,
“but we will have it so. We two will ride in company, each
shooting his own shaft for his own hand. I dare uphold my
arrow for twenty marks of gold, and my white Alan, against
thy Barbary bay. Darest thou, Sir Walter?”
“I know not that — I dare not!” answered Tyrrel; “but
your grace wagers high, nor will I lightly lose Bay Barbary:
if so our wager stand, I shoot no roving shaft.”
“Shoot as thou wilt, so stands it!”
“Amen!” cried Tyrrel, “and I doubt not to hear your grace
confess Tyrrel hath struck the lordlier quarry.”
“Away, then, all! away!” and, setting spurs to his curveting
horse, the monarch led the way at a hard gallop, followed
by all his train — a long and bright procession, their gay plumes
and many-colored garments offering a lively contrast to the
deep, leafy verdure of July, and their clear weapons glancing
lifelike to the sunshine.
They had careered along, with merriment and music, perhaps
three miles into the forest, when the deep baying of a hound
was heard, at some short distance to the right, from a thick
verge of coppice. Instantly the king curbed in his fiery horse,
and raised his hand on high, waving a silent halt. “Ha! have
we outlaws here?” he whispered close in the ear of Tyrrel.
“'Fore God, but they shall rue it!”
Scarcely had he spoken, when a buck burst from a thicket,
and, ere it made three bounds, leaped high into the air and fell,
its heart pierced through and through by the unerring shaft of
an outlying ranger, who the next instant stepped out of his covert,
and, catching sight of the gay cavalcade confronting him —
the sounds of whose approach he must have overlooked entirely
in the excitement of his sport — turned hastily as if to fly. But
it was all too late: a dozen of the king's retainers had dashed
their rowels into their horses' flanks the instant he appeared,
and scarcely had he discovered their advance before he was
their prisoner.
“A Saxon, by my soul,” cried Rufus, with a savage scowl,
“taken red-hand, and in the fact! Out with thy wood-knife,
Damian! By the most holy Virgin, we will first mar his archery,
and then present him with such a taste of venison as
shall, I warrant me, appease his hankering for one while. Off
with his thumb and finger! off with them speedily, I say, an'
thou wouldst 'scape his doom! Ha! grinnest thou, villain?”
he continued, as a contortion writhed the bold visage of his
victim, who, certain of his fate, and hopeless of resistance or
of rescue, yielded with stubborn resolution to his torturers —
“an' this doth make thee smile, thou shalt laugh outright shortly!
Hence with him, now, Damian and Hugonet; and thou,
Raoul, away with thee — set toils enow, uncouple half a score
of brachs and slowhounds, and see thou take me a right stag
of ten ere vespers! — Barebacked shalt thou ride on him to
kinsmen will entreat thee! See that the dog escape ye not, or
ye shall swing for it. Bind him, and drag him hence to the old
church of Lyme; hold him there, on your lives, till sunset!
And ye — lead thither his wild charger: we will sup there
upon the greensward, as we return to Malwood, and thou shalt
make us merry with thy untutored horsemanship. Now for
our wager, Walter! Forward — hurrah!” and on again they
dashed, until they reached the choicest hunting-ground of all
that spacious woodland — the desolate and desert spot where
once had stood the fairest village of the land.
Unroofed and doorless, in different stages of decay, a score
or two of cottages, once hospitable, happy homes of a free peasantry,
stood here and there amid the brushwood which had
encroached upon the precincts; while in the midst the desecrated
church of Lyme reared its gray tower, now overgrown
with ivy, and crumbling in silent ruin. Upon the cross which
crowned the lowly tower, there sat, as they approached, a solitary
raven — nor, though the whoop and horn rang close below
his perch, did he show any sign of wildness or of fear; but,
rising slowly on his wing, flapped round and round in two or
three slow circles, and then with a hoarse croak resumed his
station. The raven was a favorite bird with the old hunters;
and when the deer was slain he had his portion, thence named
“the raven's bone.” Indeed, so usual was the practice, that
this bird, the wildest by its nature of all the things that fly,
would rarely shun a company which its sagacity described to be
pursuers of the sylvan game.
“What! sittest thou there, old black-frock, in our presence?”
shouted the king, bending his bow; “but we will teach thee
manners!” Still, the bird moved not, but again sent forth his
ominous and sullen croak above the jocund throng. The bow
was raised — the cord was drawn back to the monarch's ear:
down, transfixed by the long shaft, with painful and discordant
cries, and fell close at the feet of Rufus's charger.
There was a murmur in the crowd; and one, a page who
waited on the king, whispered with a pale face and agitated
voice into his fellow's ear: “I have heard say —
Shaft's feather his heart-blood shall wet!”'
The red king caught the whisper, and turning with an inflamed
countenance and flashing eye on the unwitting wakener
of his wrath — “Dastard and fool!” he shouted; and, clinching
his gloved hand, he dealt the boy so fierce a blow upon the
chest, that he fell to the earth like a lifeless body, plunging so
heavily upon the sod head-foremost, that the blood gushed from
nose, ears, mouth, and he lay senseless and inanimate as the
surrounding clay. With a low, sneering laugh, the tyrant once
more spurred his charger forward, amid the smothered execrations
of his Norman followers, boiling with indignation for that
one of their noble and victorious race should have endured the
foul wrong of a blow, though it were dealt him by a monarch's
hand. And there were scowling brows, and teeth set hard,
among the very noblest of his train; and, as the glittering band
swept on, the father of the injured boy — a dark-browed, aged
veteran, who had couched lance at Hastings to win the throne
of earth's most lovely island for that base tyrant's sire — reined
in his horse, and, leaping to the earth, upraised the body from
the gory turf, and wiped away the crimson stream from the pale
features, and dashed pure water, brought from a neighboring
brooklet in a comrade's bacinet, upon the fair young brow —
but it was all in vain! The dying child rolled upward his faint
eyes; they rested on the anxious lineaments of that war-beaten
sire, who, stern and fiery to all else, had ever to that motherless
boy been soft and tender as a woman. “Father,” he gasped,
his ashy lips—“mercy, kind mother Mary! Father—father”
—the words died in the utterance; the dim eyes wavered—
closed; the head fell back upon the stalwart arm that had supported
it, and, with one long and quivering convulsion, the
innocent soul departed!
Some three or four—inferior barons of the train, yet each
a gentleman of lineage and prowess in the field, each one in
his own estimate a prince's peer—had paused around the desolate
father and his murdered child; and now, as the old man
gazed hopelessly upon the features of his first-born and his
only, the sympathy which had moistened their hard eyes and
relaxed their iron features was swallowed up in a fierce glare
of indignation, irradiating their scarred and war-seamed visages
with that sublime expression, from which, when glowing on
the face of a resolute and fearless man, the wildest savage of
the forest will shrink in mute dismay. The father, after a long
and fearful struggle with his more tender feelings—wringing his
hard hands till the blood-drops started redly from beneath every
nail—lifted his face, more pale and ashy in its hues than that
of the inanimate form which he had loved so tenderly; and as
he lifted it he caught the fierce glow mantling on the front of
each well-tried companion, and his own features lightened with
the self-same blaze: his hand sank downward to the hilt of the
long poniard at his girdle, and the fingers worked with a convulsive
tremor as they griped the well-known pommel, and an
exulting smile curled his mustached lip, prophetic of revenge.
Once more he bowed above the dead; he laid his broad hand
on the pulseless heart, and printed a long kiss on the forehead;
then lifting, with as much tenderness as though they still had
sense and feeling, the relics of the only thing he loved on earth,
he bore them from the roadside into the shelter of a tangled
coppice; unbuckled his long military mantle, and spreading it
shelter from insult or intrusion. This done, in total
silence he rejoined his friends, who had foreborne to offer aid
where they perceived it would be held superfluous. Without
one word, he grasped the bridle of his charger, tightened his
girths, and then, setting no foot to stirrup, vaulted almost without
an effort into the steel-bound demipique. Raising his arm
aloft, he pointed into the long aisles of the forest, wherein the
followers of Rufus had long since disappeared.
“Our thoughts are one!” he hissed, in accents scarcely articulate,
between his grinded teeth; “what need of words?
Are not we soldiers, gentlemen, and Normans, and shall not
deeds speak for us?”
Truly he said, their thoughts were one! — for each had severally
steeled his heart as by a common impulse: and now,
without a word, or sign, or any interchange of sentiments, feeling
that each understood the other, they wheeled their horses
on the tyrant's track, and at a hard trot rode away, resolved on
instant vengeance.
Meanwhile, the hunters had arrived at their appointed ground.
The slowhounds were uncoupled and cast loose; varlets with
hunting-poles, and mounted grooms, pressed through the underwood;
while, in each open glade and riding of the forest, yeomen
were stationed with relays of tall and stately gazehounds,
to slip upon the hart the instant he should break from the thick
covert. The knights and nobles galloped off, each with his
long-bow strung, and cloth-yard arrow notched and ready, to
posts assigned to them — some singly, some in pairs; all was
replete with animation and with fiery joy.
According to the monarch's pleasure, Tyrrel rode at his
bridle-hand, for that day's space admitted as his comrade and
his rival. Two splendid bloodhounds, coal-black, but tawny on
the muzzle and the breast, so accurately trained that they required
but neither page nor squire, such was his special mandate, accompanied
their master. And now the loud shouts of the foresters
and the deep baying of the pack gave note that the chase
was on foot; and by the varied cadences and different points
whence pealed the soul-exciting clamors, Rufus, a skilful and
sagacious sportsman, immediately perceived that two if not three
of the noble animals they hunted must have been roused at
once. For a few seconds he stood upright in his stirrups, his
hand raised to his ear, lest the slight summer breeze should
interrupt the welcome sounds.
“This way,” he said, in low and guarded tones, “this way
they bend; and with the choicest buck — hark to old Hubert's
holloa! and there, there, Tyrrel, list to that burst — list to that
long, sharp yell! Beshrew my soul, if that be not stanch Palamon
— that hound is worth ten thousand. Ha! they are now
at fault. Again! brave Palamon again! and now they turn;
hark how the echoes roar! Ay, they are crossing now the
Deer-leap dingle; and now, now, as their notes ring out distinct
and tuneful, they gain the open moorland. Spur, Tyrrel,
for your life! spur, spur! we see him not again till we reach
Bolderwood” — and, with the word, he raised his bugle to his
lips, and wound it lustily and well till every oak replied to the
long flourish.
Away they flew, driving their foaming chargers, now through
the tangled underwood with tightened reins, now with free
heads careering along the level glades, now sweeping over the
wide brooks that intersect the forest as though their steeds
were winged, and now, at distant intervals, pausing to catch the
fitful music of the pack. After a furious chase of at least two
hours, the sounds still swelling on their right, nearer and nearer
as they rode the farther, the avenue through which they had
been galloping for many minutes was intersected at right angles
for many marshy pools might be seen glittering to the
sun, which was now fast descending to the westward, and many
plants of ash and tufted hazels had sprung up, marring the
smoothness of its surface. Here, by a simultaneous motion, and
as it seemed obedient to a common thought, both riders halted.
“He must cross, Tyrrel, he must cross here,” cried the excited
monarch; “ay, by the life of Him who made us — and
that before we be ten minutes older. I will take stand even
here, where I command both alleys: ride thou some fifty yards
or so, to the right; stand by yon rowan sapling. And mark
me — see'st thou you scathed but giant oak? — Now, if he pass
on this side, mine is the first shot; if on the other, thine. I
will not balk thy fortunes; meddle not thou with mine!”
They parted — the king sitting like a statue on his well-trained
but fiery Andalusian, the rein thrown loosely on the
horse's neck, and the bow already half bent in the vigorous
right hand; the baron riding, as he had been commanded, down
the neglected avenue, till he had reached the designated tree,
when he wheeled round his courser and remained likewise motionless,
facing the king, at that brief interval.
Nearer and nearer came the baying of the pack, while ever
and anon a sharp and savage treble, mixed with the deeper
notes, gave token to the skilful foresters that they were running
with the game in view. Nearer it came, and nearer; and now
it was so close, that not an echo could be traced amid the
stormy music: but with the crash no human shout was blended,
no bugle lent its thrilling voice to the blithe uproar, no clang
of hoofs announced the presence of pursuers. All, even the
best and boldest riders, saving those two who waited there in
calm, deliberate impatience, had long been foiled by the quick
turns and undiminished pace maintained by the stout quarry.
The crashing of the branches might now be heard distinctly,
the laboring sobs of a beast overdone with toil and anguish;
the waving of the coppice followed in a long, sinuous line, resembling
in some degree the wake of a fleet ship among the
rolling billows. Midway it furrowed the dense thicket between
the king and Tyrrel, but with an inclination toward the former.
His quick eye noted his advantage: his bow rose slowly and
with a steady motion to its level; it was drawn to its full extent
— the forked steel head pressing against the polished yew,
the silken string stretched home to the right ear. The brambles
were forced violently outward, and with a mighty but laborious
effort the hunted stag dashed into the more open space.
Scarcely had he cleared the thicket, before a sharp and ringing
twang announced the shot of Rufus. So true had been his aim,
that the barbed arrow grazed the withers of the game — a hart
of grease, with ten tines on his noble antlers — leaving a gory
line where it had razed the skin; and so strong was the arm
that launched it, that the shaft, glancing downward, owing to
the king's elevation and the short distance of the mark at which
he aimed, was buried nearly to the feathers in the soft, mossy
greensward. The wounded stag bounded at least six feet into
the air; and Tyrrel, deeming the work already done, lowered
his weapon. But the king's sight was truer. Raising his
bridle-hand to screen his eyes from the rays, now nearly level,
of the setting sun — “Ho!” he cried, “Tyrrel, shoot — in the
fiend's name shoot!”
Before the words had reached his ear, the baron saw his
error; for, instantly recovering, the gallant deer dashed onward,
passing immediately beneath the oak-tree which Rufus had
already mentioned. Raising his bow with a rapidity which
seemed incredible, Tyrrel discharged his arrow. It struck,
just at the correct elevation, against the gnarled trunk of the
giant tree; but, swift as was its flight, the motion of the wounded
glade, and was lost in the thicket opposite. Diverted from its
course, but unabated in its force, the Norman shaft sped onward;
full, full and fairly it plunged into the left side of the
hapless monarch, unguarded by the arm which he had cast
aloft. The keen point actually drove clear through his body,
and through his stout buff coat, coming out over his right hip;
while the goose-feather, which had winged it to its royal mark,
was literally dabbled in his life-blood!
Without a breath, a groan, a struggle, the Conqueror's son
dropped lifeless from his saddle. His horse, freed from the
pressure of the master-limbs that had so well controlled him,
reared upright as the monarch fell, and, with a wild, quick snort
of terror, rushed furiously away into the forest. The bloodhounds
had already, by the fierce cunning of their race, discovered
that their game was wounded, and had joined freshly
with his old pursuers; while he, who did the deed, gazed for
one moment horror-stricken on the work of his right hand, and
then, without so much as drawing nigh to see if anything of life
remained to his late master, casting his fatal bow into the bushes,
put spurs to his unwearied horse, and drew not bridle till he
reached the coast; whence, taking ship, he crossed the seas,
and fell in Holy Land, hoping by many deeds of wilful bloodshed
— such is the inconsistency of man — to win God's pardon
for one involuntary slaughter.
Hours rolled away. The sun had set already, and his last
gleams were rapidly departing from the skies, nor had the
moon yet risen, when six horsemen came slowly, searching as
it were for traces on the earth, up the same alley along which
Tyrrel and the king had ridden with such furious speed since
noontide. The lingering twilight did not suffice to show the
features of the group, but the deep tones of the second rider
were those of the bereaved and vengeful father.
“How now?” he said, addressing his words to the man
who led the way, mounted upon a shaggy forest-pony; “how
now, Sir Saxon! — is it for this we saved thee from the tyrant's
hangmen, that thou shouldst prove a blind guide in this
matter?”
“Norman,” replied the other, still scanning, as he spoke, the
ground dinted and torn by the fresh hoof-tracks, “my heart
thirsts for vengeance not less than thine; nor is our English
blood less stanch, although it be less fiery, than the hottest
stream that swells the veins of your proud race! I tell you,
Rufus hath passed here, and he hath not turned back. You
shall have your revenge!”
Even as he spoke, the beast which he bestrode set his feet
firm and snuffed the air, staring as though his eyeballs would
start from their sockets, and uttering a tremulous, low neigh.
“Blood hath been shed here! and that, I trow, since sunset!
Jesu! what have we now?” he cried, as his eye fell upon the
carcass that so lately had exulted in the possession of health,
and energy, and strength, and high dominion. “By Thor the
Thunderer, it is the tyrant's corpse!”
“And slain,” replied the father, “slain by another's hand than
mine! Curses, ten thousand curses, on him who shot this
shaft!” While he was speaking he dismounted, approached
the body of his destined victim, and gazed with an eye of hatred
most insatiably savage upon the rigid face and stiffening limbs;
then drawing his broad dagger — “I have sworn!” he muttered,
as he besmeared its blade with the dark, curdled gore — “I
have sworn! Lie there and rot,” he added, spurning the body
with his foot. “And now we must away, for we are known
and noted; and, whoso did the deed, 'tis we shall bear the
blame of it. We must see other lands. I will but leave a
brief word with the monks of Lymington, that they commit my
poor boy to a hallowed tomb, and then farewell, fair England!”
British soil; nor — though shrewd search was made for them
until the confessor of Tyrrel, when that bold spirit had departed,
revealed the real slayer of the king — did any rumor of their
residence or fortunes reach any mortal ear.
The moon rose over the New Forest broad and unclouded,
and the dew fell heavy over glade and woodland. The night
wore onward, and the bright planet set, and one by one the stars
went out — and still the king lay there untended and alone.
The morning mists were rising, when the rumbling sound of a
rude cart awoke the echoes of that fearful solitude. A charcoal-burner
of the forest was returning from his nocturnal labors,
whistling cheerfully the burden of some Saxon ballad, as he
threaded the dark mazes of the green-wood. A wiry-looking
cur — maimed, in obedience to the forest-law, lest he should
chase the deer reserved to the proud conquerors alone — followed
the footsteps of his master, who had already passed the
corpse, when a half-startled yelp, followed upon the instant by
a most melancholy howl, attracted the attention of the peasant.
After a moment's search he found, although he did not recognise,
the cause of his dog's terror; and, casting it upon his
loaded cart, bore it to the same church whereat but a few hours
before the living sovereign had determined to glut his fierce
eyes with the death-pangs of his fellow-man. Strange are the
ways of Providence. That destined man lived after his intended
torturer! And, stranger yet, freed from his bonds, that
he might minister unto the slaughter of that self-same torturer,
he found his purpose frustrate — frustrate, as it were, by its accomplishment
— his meditated deed anticipated, his desperate
revenge forestalled. — “Verily, vengeance is mine,” saith the
Lord, “and I will repay it.”
| The knights of England, France, and Scotland | |