ise joined them to
her. Verily, such holy men could not countenance treason.

Truth enough: but that which was untrue was not the treason, but the
holiness of these Caiaphases.

And now began that woeful Dolorous Way, which our Lord King Edward trod
after his Master Christ. But who knoweth whither a strange road shall
lead him, until he be come to the end thereof? I wis well that many
folk have said unto us--Jack and me--since all things were made plain,
How is it ye saw not aforetime, and wherefore followed ye the Queen thus
long? They saw not aforetime, no more than we; but now that all is
open, up come they with wagging heads and snorkilling noses,
and--"Verily, we were sore to blame for not seeing through the mist"--
the mist through the which, when it lay thick, no man saw. _Ha,
chetife_! I could easily fall to prophesying, myself, when all is over.
Could we have seen what lay at the end of that Dolorous Way, should any
true and loyal man have gone one inch along it?

And who was like to think, till he did see, what an adder the King
nursed in his bosom? Most men counted her a fair white dove, all
innocent and childlike: that did I not. I did see far enough, for all
the mist, to see she was no child in that fashion; yet children love
mischief well enough betimes; and I counted her, if not white, but
grey--not the loathly black fiend that she was at the last seen to be.
I saw many a thing I loved not, many a thing I would not have done in
her place, many a thing that I but half conceived, and feared to be ill
deed--but there ended my seeing. I thought she was caught within the
meshes of a net, and I was sorry she kept not thereout. But I never
guessed that the net was spread by her own hands.

My mother, Dame Alice de Lethegreve, I think, saw clearer than I did:
but it was by reason she loved more,--loved him who became the
sacrifice, not the miserable sinner for whose hate and wickedness he was
sacrificed.

So soon as King Edward knew of the Queen's landing, which was by
Michaelmas Eve at latest, he put forth a proclamation to all his lieges,
wherein he bade them resist the foreign horde about to be poured upon
England. Only three persons were to be received with welcome and
honour: which was, the Queen herself, Edward her son (his father, in his
just ire, named him not his son, neither as Earl of Chester), and the
King's brother, the Lord Edmund of Kent. I always was sorry for my Lord
of Kent; he