superior, but given up for the last few days to a foreign priest, to
whom the whole community appeared to consider the reverence of a saint
was due. And yet this priest, who, seated alone, by a casement which
commanded a partial view of the distant Tower of London, received the
conspirator, was clad in the humblest serge. His face was smooth and
delicate; and the animation of the aspect, the vehement impatience of
the gesture, evinced little of the holy calm that should belong to
those who have relinquished the affairs of earth for meditation on the
things of heaven. To this personage the sturdy Hilyard bowed his
manly knees; and casting himself at the priest's feet, his eyes, his
countenance, changed from their customary hardihood and recklessness
into an expression at once of reverence and of pity.

"Well, man--well, friend--good friend, tried and leal friend, speak!
speak!" exclaimed the priest, in an accent that plainly revealed a
foreign birth.

"Oh, gracious lady! all hope is over; I come but to bid you fly. Adam
Warner was brought before the usurper; he escaped, indeed, the
torture, and was faithful to the trust. But the papers--the secret of
the rising--are in the hands of Hastings."

"How long, O Lord," said Margaret of Anjou, for she it was, under that
reverend disguise, "how long wilt Thou delay the hour of triumph and
revenge?"

The princess as she spoke had suffered her hood to fall back, and her
pale, commanding countenance, so well fitted to express fiery and
terrible emotion, wore that aspect in which many a sentenced man had
read his doom,--an aspect the more fearful, inasmuch as the passion