full, as with the vigour of youth restored. All turned their eyes,
appalled; all stood spell-bound.

There sate the King upright on the bed, his face seen above the
kneeling prelates, and his eyes bright and shining down the Hall.

"Yea," he said, deliberately, "yea, as this shall be a real vision or
a false illusion, grant me, Almighty One, the power of speech to tell
it."

He paused a moment, and thus resumed:

"It was on the banks of the frozen Seine, this day thirty-and-one
winters ago, that two holy monks, to whom the gift of prophecy was
vouchsafed, told me of direful woes that should fall on England; 'For
God,' said they, 'after thy death, has delivered England into the hand
of the enemy, and fiends shall wander over the land.' Then I asked in
my sorrow, 'Can nought avert the doom? and may not my people free
themselves by repentance, like the Ninevites of old?' And the
Prophets answered, 'Nay, nor shall the calamity cease, and the curse
be completed, till a green tree be sundered in twain, and the part cut
off be carried away; yet move, of itself, to the ancient trunk, unite
to the stem, bud out with the blossom, and stretch forth its fruit.'
So said the monks, and even now, ere I spoke, I saw them again, there,
standing mute, and with the paleness of dead men, by the side of my
bed!"

These words were said so calmly, and as it were so rationally, that
their import became doubly awful from the cold precision of the tone.
A shudder passed through the assembly, and each man shrunk from the