her warders, so as to hinder any surreptitious communication from
passing between them. Sometimes, however, the poor would accost her
or her suite as she rode out; and she had a great compassion for
them, deprived, as she said, of the alms of the religious houses, and
flogged or branded if hunger forced them into beggary. On a fine
spring day Sir Ralf Sadler invited the ladies out to a hawking party
on the banks of the Dove, with the little sparrow hawks, whose prey
was specially larks. Pity for the beautiful soaring songster, or for
the young ones that might be starved in their nests, if the parent
birds were killed, had not then been thought of. A gallop on the
moors, though they were strangely dull, gray, and stony, was always
the best remedy for the Queen's ailments; and the party got into the
saddle gaily, and joyously followed the chase, thinking only of the
dexterity and beauty of the flight of pursuer and pursued, instead of
the deadly terror and cruel death to which they condemned the created
creature, the very proverb for joyousness.

It was during the halt which followed the slaughter of one of the
larks, and the reclaiming of the hawk, that Cicely strayed a little
away from the rest of the party to gather some golden willow catkins
and sprays of white sloe thorn wherewith to adorn a beaupot that
might cheer the dull rooms at Tutbury.

She had jumped down from her pony for the purpose, and was culling
the branch, when from the copsewood that clothed the gorge of the
river a ragged woman, with a hood tied over her head, came forward
with outstretched hand asking for alms.

"Yon may have something from the Queen anon, Goody, when I can get
back to her," said Cis, not much liking the looks or the voice of the