and
counts him a servant of God. He is with Master Raynal as I write. I fear
this may be heavy news for you, Sir John, so I will write no more, but I
recommend myself to you, and pray that you may be comforted and speeded
here by the grace of God, which ever have you in His keeping.

"Written at Westminster, the Wednesday after Corpus Xti.

"Yours,

"......."

I asked the fellow who brought the letter whether he could tell me any
more, but all that he could say was that he was in the court outside my
lord cardinal's privy stairs--where the people were assembled to see
Master Richard come out, and that he had seen a confusion, and blows
struck, and the glaivemen run in to help him. Then he had seen no more,
but he thought Master Richard had been taken back again to the palace,
and heard that he had been sore wounded and beaten, and was not like to
live.

* * * * *

I will not tell you, my children, of my ride to London that night, save
that I do not think I ceased praying from the instant that I set out to
the instant when I came up as the dawn began behind Lambeth House, and
we went over in the ferry. I cried in my heart with David, _Fili mi,
Fili mi; quis mihi tribuat ut ego moriar pro te, fili mi, fili mi?_
["My son, my son! Who would grant that I might die for thee, my son, my
son?"--2 Kings xviii. 33.] And I prayed two things--that God might
forgive me for having allowed the lad to go, and that I might find him
alive. More than that I dared not pray, and I know not even now if I
should have prayed the first.

It was a wonderful dawn that I saw as I crossed over, with a mist coming
up from the water as a promise of great heat, and above it the high
roofs and towers like the lovely city of God, and over all the sky was
of a golden colour with lines of pearl across it. It comforted me a
little that I should come to Master Richard so.

Even at that hour there were many awake. There was one great fellow by
the ferry, that was looking across towards the palace; and I think it
must have been he who had taken Master Richard over for love of saint
Giles and saint Denis, but I did not know that part of the tale at that
time, and I never saw him again.

In the court and passages, too, that we went along there were persons
going to and fro. One told me afterwards that never had he seen such a
movement at that hour since the night