on; build Thou the walls of
Jerusalem;'--at that much-loved word, the light of the blue eyes once
more beamed out, and he spoke again. 'Jerusalem! On the faith of a
dying king, it was my earnest purpose to have composed matters here into
peace and union, and so to have delivered Jerusalem. But the will of God
be done, since He saw me unworthy.'

Then his eyes closed again; he slept, or seemed to sleep; and then a
strange quivering came over the face, the lips moved again, and the words
broke from them, 'Thou liest, foul spirit! thou liest!' but, as though
the parting soul had gained the victory in that conflict, peace came down
on the wasted features; and with the very words of his Redeemer Himself,
'Into Thy hands I commend my spirit,' he did indeed fall asleep; the
mighty soul passed from the worn-out frame.

CHAPTER XIII: THE RING AND THE EMPTY THRONE

No one knows how great a tree has been till it has fallen; nor how large
a space a mighty man has occupied till he is removed.

King Henry V. left his friends and foes alike almost dizzy, as in place
of his grand figure they found a blank; instead of the hand whose force
they had constantly felt, mere emptiness.

Malcolm of Glenuskie, who had been asserting constantly that King Henry
was no master of his, and had no rights over him, had nevertheless, for
the last year or more, been among those to whom the King's will was the
moving spring, fixing the disposal of almost every hour, and making
everything dependent thereon.

When the death-hush was broken by the 'Depart, O Christian soul,' and
Bedford, with a face white and set like a statue, stood up from his
knees, and crossed and kissed the still white brow, it was to Malcolm as
if the whole universe had become as nothing. To him there remained only
the great God, the heavenly Jerusalem into which the King had entered,
and himself far off from the straight way, wandering from his promise and
his purpose into what seemed to him a mere hollow painted scene, such as
came and went in the midst of a banquet. Or, again, it was the grisly
Dance of Death that was the only reality; Death had clutched the
mightiest in the ring. Whom would he clutch next?

He stood motionless, as one in a dream, or rather as if not knowing which
was reality, and which phantom; gazing, gazing on at the bed where the
King lay, round which the ecclesiastics were busying themselves,
unperceiving that James, Bedford, and the noble