galloped away in hasty flight.

There is little more to say. Maud's cause was at an end. Not long
afterwards her brother died, and she withdrew to Normandy, glad,
doubtless, to be well out of that pestiferous island, but, mayhap,
mourning that her arrogant folly had robbed her of a throne.

A few years afterwards her son Henry took up her cause, and landed in
England with an army. But the threatened hostilities ended in a truce,
which provided that Henry should reign after Stephen's death. Stephen
died a year afterwards, England gained an able monarch, and prosperity
returned to the realm after fifteen years of the most frightful misery
and misrule.




_THE CAPTIVITY OF RICHARD COEUR DE LION._


In the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1192, a pirate vessel
touched land on the coast of Sclavonia, at the port of Yara. Those were
days in which it was not easy to distinguish between pirates and true
mariners, either in aspect or avocation, neither being afflicted with
much inconvenient honesty, both being hungry for spoil. From this vessel
were landed a number of passengers,--knights, chaplains, and
servants,--Crusaders on their way home from the Holy Land, and in need,
for their overland journey, of a safe-conduct from the lord of the
province.