lay a female, dead too; but whether by the hand of man or the mercy of
Heaven, there was no sign to tell. Scholar and Child, Knowledge and
Innocence, alike were cold; the grim Age had devoured them, as it
devours ever those before, as behind, its march, and confounds, in one
common doom, the too guileless and the too wise!

"Why crowd ye thus, knaves?" said a commanding voice.

"Ha, Lord Hastings! approach! behold!" exclaimed Alwyn.

"Ha, ha!" shouted Graul, as she led her sisters from the spot,
wheeling, and screaming, and tossing up their timbrels, "ha! the witch
and her lover! Ha, ha! Foul is fair! Ha, ha! Witchcraft and death
go together, as thou mayest learn at the last, sleek wooer."

And, peradventure, when, long years afterwards, accusations of
witchcraft, wantonness, and treason resounded in the ears of Hastings,
and, at the signal of Gloucester, rushed in the armed doomsman, those
ominous words echoed back upon his soul!

At that very hour the gates of the Tower were thrown open to the
multitude. Fresh from his victory, Edward and his brothers had gone
to render thanksgivings at St. Paul's (they were devout, those three
Plantagenets!), thence to Baynard's Castle, to escort the queen and
her children once more to the Tower. And, now, the sound of trumpets
stilled the joyous uproar of the multitude, for in the balcony of the
casement that looked towards the chapel the herald had just announced
that King Edward would show himself to the people. On every inch of
the courtyard, climbing up wall and palisade, soldier, citizen, thief,
harlot, age, childhood, all the various conditions and epochs of