said the Bishop of Ely, re-entering.

Lord Hastings looks around with an air of general congratulation, and
remarks:--

"His grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning;
There's some conceit or other likes him well."

The serpent is hidden, but very near. A moment later, Gloster enters,
black as night, hisses his monstrous charge, and before noon of that
same day poor Hastings is a headless corpse.

Far more sad and pitiful are the scenes recalled by the words of the
fiendish Iago,--type for all time of those who transmute love into
jealousy:--

"Tell me but this--
Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief,
Spotted with strawberries, in your wife's hand?"
"I gave her such a one; 'twas my first gift."

was the answer of a man whom the world will never forgive, in spite of
his immeasurable remorse.

From the poet Spenser we learn that to go a-strawberrying was one of
the earliest pastimes of the English people. In the "Faerie Queen" we
find these lines:--

"One day, as they all three together went