ion-hearted, we all very well know that the shaft of
Bertrand de Gourdon put an end to the royal hero--and that from that
29th of March he never robbed nor murdered any more. And we have legends
in recondite books of the manner of the King's death.

"You must die, my son," said the venerable Walter of Rouen, as
Berengaria was carried shrieking from the King's tent. "Repent, Sir
King, and separate yourself from your children!"

"It is ill jesting with a dying man," replied the King. "Children have I
none, my good lord bishop, to inherit after me."

"Richard of England," said the archbishop, turning up his fine eyes,
"your vices are your children. Ambition is your eldest child, Cruelty
is your second child, Luxury is your third child; and you have nourished
them from your youth up. Separate yourself from these sinful ones, and
prepare your soul, for the hour of departure draweth nigh."

Violent, wicked, sinful, as he might have been, Richard of England met
his death like a Christian man. Peace be to the soul of the brave! When
the news came to King Philip of France, he sternly forbade his courtiers
to rejoice at the death of his enemy. "It is no matter of joy but of
dolor," he said, "that the bulwark of Christendom and the bravest king
of Europe is no more."

Meanwhile what has become of Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, whom we left in the
act of rescuing his sovereign by running the Count of Chalus through the
body?

As the good knight stooped down to pick his sword out of the corpse of
his fallen foe, some one coming behind him suddenly thrust a dagger into
his back at a place where his shirt-of-mail was open (for Sir Wilfrid
had armed that morning in a hurry, and it was his breast, not his back,
that he was accustomed ordinarily to protect); and when poor Wamba came
up on the rampart, which he did when the fighting was over,--being
such a fool that he could not be got to thrust his head into danger for
glory's sake--he found his dear knight with the dagger in his back
lying without life upon the body of the Count de Chalus whom he had anon
slain.

Ah, what a howl poor Wamba set up when he found his master killed!
How he lamented over the corpse of that noble knight and friend! What
mattered it to him that Richard the King was borne wounded to his tent,
and that Bertrand de Gourdon was flayed alive? At another time the sight
of this spectacle might have amused the simple knave; but now all his
thoughts were of his lord