and when that anointed head with its grey hairs, whitened with sorrow, mark
you, not with age, was lifted up, bloody, terrible, and proclaimed the head
of a traitor? Ah, reverend mother, ten such moments will age a man by ten
years. Was it not the most portentous tragedy which the earth has ever
seen since He who was both God and Man died upon Calvary? Other judicial
sacrifices have been, but never of a victim as guiltless and as noble. Had
you but seen the calm beauty of his countenance as he turned it towards the
people! Oh, my King, my master, my beloved friend, when shall I see that
face in Paradise, with the blood washed from that royal brow, with the
smile of the redeemed upon those lips!"

He flung himself into a chair, covered his face with those weather-stained
hands, which had broadened by much grasping of sword and pistol, pike and
gun, and sobbed aloud, with a fierce passion that convulsed the strong
muscular frame. Of all the King's servants this one had been the most
steadfast, was marked in the black book of the Parliament as a notorious
Malignant. From the raising of the standard on the castle-hill at
Nottingham--in the sad evening of a tempestuous day, with but scanty
attendance, and only evil presages--to the treaty at Newport, and the
prison on the low Hampshire coast, this man had been his master's constant
companion and friend; fighting in every battle, cleaving to King and Prince
in spite of every opposing influence, carrying letters between father
and son in the teeth of the enemy, humbling himself as a servant, and
performing menial labours, in those latter days of bitterness and outrage,
when all courtly surroundings were denied the fallen monarch.

And now he mourned his martyred King more bitterly than he would have
mourned his own brother.

The little girl slipped from the reverend mother's lap, and ran across the