"Written at Westminster, the Wednesday after Corpus Xti.

"Yours,

"......."

I asked the fellow who brought the letter whether he could tell me any
more, but all that he could say was that he was in the court outside my
lord cardinal's privy stairs--where the people were assembled to see
Master Richard come out, and that he had seen a confusion, and blows
struck, and the glaivemen run in to help him. Then he had seen no more,
but he thought Master Richard had been taken back again to the palace,
and heard that he had been sore wounded and beaten, and was not like to
live.

* * * * *

I will not tell you, my children, of my ride to London that night, save
that I do not think I ceased praying from the instant that I set out to
the instant when I came up as the dawn began behind Lambeth House, and
we went over in the ferry. I cried in my heart with David, _Fili mi,
Fili mi; quis mihi tribuat ut ego moriar pro te, fili mi, fili mi?_
["My son, my son! Who would grant that I might die for thee, my son, my
son?"--2 Kings xviii. 33.] And I prayed two things--that God might
forgive me for having allowed the lad to go, and that I might find him
alive. More than that I dared not pray, and I know not even now if I
should have prayed the first.

It was a wonderful dawn that I saw as I crossed over, with a mist coming
up from the water as a promise of great heat, and above it the high