relief of Zutphen, and will,
as we believe, drive from before us the foes of the Holy Church.'

As they passed under the low doorway into a narrow entry paved with clay,
Mary's guide said,--

'Tarry here, while I find what has passed in my absence.'

Mary was not left long in suspense.

The man presently returned, and, beckoning her, said,--

'Come, without delay!'

Mary found herself in a low, miserably furnished room on the ground-floor,
where, in the now clear light of the bright summer morning, Ambrose Gifford
lay dying.

The 'large, cruel, black eyes,' as Lucy Forrester had called them long ago,
were dim now, and were turned with pitiful pleading upon the wife he had so
grievously injured.

The priest stood by, and signed to Mary to kneel and put her face near her
husband, that she might hear what he had to say.

As she obeyed, the hood fell back from her head, and a ray of sunshine
caught the wealth of her rich chestnut hair and made an aureole round it.
The grey streaks, which sorrow rather than years, had mingled amongst the
bronze locks, shone like silver. She took the long, wasted hand in hers,
and, in a low, clear voice, said,--

'I am here, Ambrose! what would you say to me?'

'The boy!' he gasped; 'fetch hither the boy!'

One of the Brothers obeyed the dying man's request, and from a pallet at
the farther end of the room he brought the boy, whose cheeks were aflame
with fever, as he lay helpless in the Brother's arms.

'Here, Ambrose,' the dying father said--'this--this is your mother; be a
good son to her.'

Often as Mary Gifford had drawn a picture in her own mind of this possible
meeting with her son, so long delayed, such a meeting as this had never
been imagined in her wildest dreams.

'Thus, then, I make atonement,' the unhappy man said. 'Take him, Mary, and
forgive it _all_.'

'Yes,' Mary said, as the boy was laid on the pallet at his father's feet,
and his mother clasped him close to her side. 'Yes, I forgive--'

'_All?_' he said. '_All?_'

'As I pray God to be forgiven,' she said, womanly pity for this forlorn
ending of a misspent life thrilling in her voice, as hot tears coursed one
another down her pale sweet face. 'Yes,' she repeated, '_all_! Ambrose.'

'One thing more. Did I murder Humphrey Ratcliffe? Does that sin lie on my
soul?'

'No, thank God!' Mary said. 'He lives; he was cruelly wounded, but God
spared his life.'

There was silence now. The priest bid Mary move