So saying, he arose and left the banqueting-room, followed by Athelstane and by several other guests, who, partaking of the Saxon lineage, held themselves insulted by the sarcasms of Prince John and his courtiers.

"By the bones of St. Thomas!" said Prince John as they retreated, "the Saxon churls have borne off the best of the day, and have retreated with triumph."

"Conclamatum est, poculatum est," said Prior Aymer; we have drunk and we have shouted: it were time we left our wineflagons."

"The monk is in a hurry to depart," said De Bracy.

"Even so, Sir Knight,” replied the abbot; "for I must move several miles forward this evening upon my homeward journey." "They are breaking up," said the prince in a whisper to Fitzurse. "Their fears anticipate the event, and this coward prior is the first to shrink from me."

"Fear not, my lord," said Waldemar. "I will show him such reasons as shall induce him to join us when we hold our meeting at York. Sir Prior," he said, "I must speak with you in private before you mount your palfrey."

The other guests were now fast dispersing, with the exception of those immediately attached to Prince John's faction, and his retinue.

"This, then, is the result of your advice," said the prince, turning an angry countenance upon Fitzurse: "that I should be bearded at my own board by a drunken Saxon churl, and that, on the mere sound of my brother's name, men should fall off from me as if I had the leprosy!"

Have patience, sir," replied his counselor. "I might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design and misled your own better judgment; but this is no time for recrimination. De Bracy and I will instantly go among these shuffling cowards, and convince them they have gone too far to recede."

"It will be in vain," said Prince John, pacing the apartment

with disordered steps, and expressing himself with an agitation to which the wine he had drunk partly contributed. It will be in vain. They have seen the handwriting on the wall; they have marked the paw of the lion in the sand, they have heard his approaching roar shake the wood; nothing will reanimate their courage."

'Would to God," said Fitzurse to De Bracy," that aught could reanimate his own! His brother's very name is an ague to him. Unhappy are the counselors of a prince who wants fortitude and perseverance alike in good and in evil.”

CHAPTER XV.

O spider ever took more pains to repair the shattered meshes

bine the scattered members of Prince John's cabal.1

Arguments adapted to the peculiar circumstances of those whom he addressed had weight with the nobles of Prince John's faction. Most of them consented to attend the proposed meeting at York, for the purpose of making general arrangements for placing the crown upon the head of Prince John.

It was late at night when, worn out and exhausted with his various exertions, however gratified with the result, Fitzurse, returning to the Castle of Ashby, met with De Bracy, who had exchanged his banqueting garments for a short green kirtle, with hose of the same cloth and color, a leathern cap or headpiece, a short sword, a horn slung over his shoulder, a longbow in his hand, and a bundle of arrows stuck in his belt. Had Fitzurse met this figure in an outer apartment, he would have passed him without notice, as one of the yeomen of the guard; but, finding him in the inner hall, he looked at him with more attention, and recognized the Norman knight in the dress of an English yeoman.

"What mummery is this, De Bracy?" said Fitzurse somewhat angrily. "Is this a time for Christmas gambols and quaint maskings, when the fate of our master, Prince John, is on the very verge of decision? Why hast thou not been, like me, among these heartless cravens, whom the very name of King Richard terrifies, as it is said to do the children of the Saracens?"

"I have been attending to mine own business," answered De Bracy calmly, "as you, Fitzurse, have been minding yours." "I minding mine own business!" echoed Waldemar. "I have been engaged in that of Prince John, our joint patron."

“As if thou hadst any other reason for that, Waldemar,” said De Bracy, "than the promotion of thine own individual interest! Come, Fitzurse, we know each other. Ambition is thy pursuit, pleasure is mine, and they become our different ages. Of Prince John thou thinkest as I do,- that he is too weak to be a determined monarch, too tyrannical to be an easy monarch, too insolent and presumptuous to be a popular monarch, and too fickle and timid to be long a monarch of any kind. But he is a monarch by whom Fitzurse and De Bracy hope to rise and thrive; and therefore you aid him with your policy, and I with the lances of my Free Companions."

"A hopeful auxiliary," said Fitzurse impatiently; "playing the fool in the very moment of utter necessity. What on earth dost thou purpose by this absurd disguise at a moment so urgent?

"To get me a wife," answered De Bracy coolly. "I mean to purvey me a wife. I will carry off the lovely Rowena."

“Bethink_thee,

Art thou mad, De Bracy?" said Fitzurse. that, though the men be Saxons, they are rich and powerful, and regarded with the more respect by their countrymen that wealth and honor are but the lot of few of Saxon descent."

"And should belong to none," said De Bracy. "The work of the Conquest should be completed."

"This is no time for it," said Fitzurse. "The approaching crisis renders the favor of the multitude indispensable, and Prince John cannot refuse justice to any one who injures their favorites."

"Let him grant it if he dare," said De Bracy. "He will soon see the difference betwixt the support of such a lusty lot of spears as mine and that of a heartless mob of Saxon churls. Yet I mean no immediate discovery of myself. Seem I not in this

garb as bold a forester as ever blew horn? The blame of the violence shall rest with the outlaws of the Yorkshire forests. I have sure spies on the Saxons' motions. To-night they sleep in the convent of St. Wittol, or Withold, or whatever they call that churl of a Saxon saint at Burton-on-Trent.1 Next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways,2 we swoop on them at once. Presently after I will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one, conduct her to Front-de-Bouf's castle, or to Normandy if it should be necessary, and produce her not again to her kindred until she be the bride and dame of Maurice de Bracy."

"A marvelously sage plan," said Fitzurse, "and, as I think not entirely of thine own device. Come, be frank, De Bracy, who aided thee in the invention, and who is to assist in the exe cution? for, as I think, thine own band lies as far off as York."

"Marry, if thou must needs know," said De Bracy, "it was the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert that shaped out the enterprise. He is to aid me in the onslaught, and he and his followers will personate the outlaws from whom my valorous arm is, after changing my garb, to rescue the lady."

'By my halidom," said Fitzurse, "the plan was worthy of your united wisdom! And thy prudence, De Bracy, is most especially manifested in the project of leaving the lady in the hands of thy worthy confederate. Thou mayst, I think, succeed in taking her from her Saxon friends, but how thou wilt rescue her afterwards from the clutches of Bois-Guilbert seems considerably more doubtful. He is a falcon well accustomed to pounce on a partridge, and to hold his prey fast."

1 A town on the Trent River, in the counties of Stafford and Derby. 2 Like the swift flight of a falcon.

"He is a Templar," said De Bracy, "and cannot therefore rival me in my plan of wedding this heiress."

"Then, since naught that I can say," said Fitzurse, “will put this folly from thy imagination (for well I know the obstinacy of thy disposition), at least waste as little time as possible: let not thy folly be lasting as well as untimely."

"I tell thee," answered De Bracy, "that it will be the work of a few hours; and I shall be at York, at the head of my daring, and valorous fellows, as ready to support any bold design as thy policy can be to form one. But I hear my comrades assembling, and the steeds stamping and neighing in the outer court. well! I go, like a true knight, to win the smiles of beauty."

Fare

"Like a true knight!" repeated Fitzurse, looking after him: “like a fool, I should say, or like a child, who will leave the most serious and needful occupation to chase the down of the thistle that drives past him. But it is with such tools that I must work; and for whose advantage? For that of a prince as likely to be an ungrateful master as he has already proved a rebellious son and an unnatural brother.. But he-he, too, is but one of the tools with which I labor; and, proud as he is, should he presume to separate his interest from mine, this is a secret which he shall soon learn."

The meditations of the statesman were here interrupted by the voice of the prince from an interior apartment, calling out, "Noble Waldemar Fitzurse!" and, with bonnet doffed, the future chancellor (for to such high preferment did the wily Norman aspire) hastened to receive the orders of the future sovereign.

THE

CHAPTER XVI.

HE reader cannot have forgotten that the event of the tournament was decided by the exertions of an unknown knight, Le Noir Faineant. This knight had left the field abruptly when the victory was achieved, and, when he was called upon