s in sore trouble, as we all must be. Take
me to thy mother, boy.'

'Uncle Philip will soon be well of his wound,' the child said, 'the bullet
did not touch his heart, Master Ratcliffe saith.'

The Earl shook his head.

'It will be as God pleases, boy,' and there, in the corridor, as he was
hastening to his wife's apartments, she came towards him with outstretched
arms.

'Oh! my husband,' she said, as he clasped her to his breast. 'Oh! pity me,
pity me! and pray God that I may find comfort.'

'Yes, yes, my sweetheart,' the Earl said, and then husband and wife turned
into their own chamber, Will, subdued at the sight of his mother's grief,
not attempting to follow them, and Lucy was again alone.

CHAPTER XV

THE PASSING OF PHILIP

'Oh, Death, that hast us of much riches reft,
Tell us at least what hast thou with it done?
What has become of him whose flower here left
Is but the shadow of his likeness gone?
Scarce like the shadow of that which he was,
Nought like, but that he like a shade did pass.

But that immortal spirit which was decked
With all the dowries of celestial grace,
By sovereign choice from heavenly choirs select
And lineally derived from angel's race;
Oh, what is now of it become aread?
Ah me, can so divine a thing be dead!

Ah no, it is not dead, nor can it die,
But lives for aye in blissful Paradise,
Where, like a new-born babe it soft doth lie
In bed of lilies wrapped in tender wise,
And dainty violets from head to feet,
And compassed all about with roses sweet.'

From the _Lament of Sir Philip_ by
MARY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.

'At Arnhem, in the month of October 1586; this to my dear sister, Lucy
Forrester.' This was the endorsement of a letter from Mary Gifford, which
was put into Lucy's hands on the day when a wave of sorrow swept over the
country as the news was passed from mouth to mouth that Sir Philip Sidney
was dead.

There had been so many alternations of hope and fear, and the official
reports from the Earl of Leicester had been on the hopeful side, while
those of Robert Sidney and other of his devoted friends and servants, had
latterly been on the side of despair.

Now Mary Gifford had written for Lucy's information an account of what had
passed in these five-and-twenty days, when Sir Philip lay in the house of
Madame Gruithuissens, ministered to by her