;' and bending forward to pour a handful of
silver into the beggar's cap, he said, 'Pray, Gaffer, pray--pray for the
dead and living, both.'

'So,' said James, as both mounted, 'there's a fee for a boding traitor.'

'I knew his face,' said Bedford, with a shudder; 'he belonged to
Archbishop Scrope.'

'A traitor, too,' said James.

'Nay, there was too much cause for his words. Never shall I forget the
day when Scrope was put to death on this very moor on which we are
entering. There sat my father on his horse, with us four boys around
him, when the old man passed in front of us, and looked at him with a
face pitiful and terrible. "Harry of Bolingbroke," he said, "because
thou hast done these things, therefore shall thy foes be of thine own
household; the sword shall never depart therefrom, but all the increase
of thy house shall die in the flower of their age, and in the fourth
generation shall their name be clean cut off." The commons will have it
that at that moment my father was struck with leprosy; and struck to the
heart assuredly he was, nor was he ever the same man again. I always
believed that those words made him harder upon every prank of poor Hal's,
till any son save Hal would have become his foe! And see now, the old
bedesman may be in the right; poor pretty Blanche has long been in her
grave, Thomas is with her now, and Jamie,'--he lowered his voice,--'when
men say that Harry hath more of Alexander in him than there is in other
men, it strikes to my heart to think of the ring lying on the empty
throne.'

'Now,' said James, 'what strikes _me_ is, what doleful bodings can come
into a brave man's head on a chill morning before he has broken his fast.
A tankard of hot ale will chase away omens, whether of bishop or
bedesman.'

'It may chase them from the mind, but will not make away with them,' said
John. 'But I might have known better than to speak to you of such
things--you who are well-nigh a Lollard in disbelief of all beyond
nature.'

'No Lollard am I,' said James. 'What Holy Church tells me, I believe
devoutly; but not in that which she bids me loathe as either craft of
devils or of men.'

'Ay, of which? There lies the question,' said John.

'Of men,' said the Scottish king; 'of men who have wit enough to lay hold
of the weaker side even of a sober youth such as Lord John of Lancaster!
Your proneness to believe in sayings and prophecies, in sorceries and
magic, is the weakest point of