Some ten or twelve days after the momentous event recorded in our last
chapter, King Edward's royal palace, at Winchester, was thronged at an
unusually early hour by many noble knights and barons, bearing on their
countenances symptoms of some new and unexpected excitement; and there
was a dark boding gloom on the now contracted brow and altered features
of England's king, as, weakened and well-nigh worn out by a lingering
disease, he reclined on a well-cushioned couch, to receive the
eagerly-offered homage of his loyal barons. He, who had been from
earliest youth a warrior, with whose might and dauntless prowess there
was not one, or prince, or noble, or English, or foreigner, could
compete, whose strength of frame and energy of mind had ever borne him
scathless and uninjured through scenes of fatigue, and danger, and
blood, and death; whose sword had restored a kingdom to his father--had
struggled for Palestine and her holy pilgrims--had given Wales to
England, and again and again prostrated the hopes and energies of
Scotland into the dust; even he, this mighty prince, lay prostrate now,
unable to conquer or to struggle with disease--disease that attacked the
slave, the lowest serf or yeoman of his land, and thus made manifest,
how in the sight of that King of kings, from whom both might and
weakness come, the prince and peasant are alike--the monarch and the
slave!

The disease had been indeed in part subdued, but Edward could not close
his eyes to the fact that he should never again be what he had been;
that the strength which had enabled him to do and endure so much, the
energy which had ever led him on to victory, the fire which had so often
inspired his own heart, and urged on, as by magic power, his
followers--that all these were gone from him, and forever. Ambition,
indeed, yet burned within, strong, undying, mighty; aye, perhaps