in the alder-trees,
Voices he knew, and one that sweetly said,
"Thine!" and he paused with choking heart, and saw
Eustace, his brother, and fair Agnes Vail
In the soft moonrise lingering with clasped hands.
The two passed on, and Regnald hid himself
Among the brushwood, where his vulpine eyes
Dilated in the darkness as they passed.
There, in the dark, he lay a bitter hour
Gnawing his nails, and then arose unseen
And crept away with murder in his soul.

Eustace! curse on him, with his handsome eyes!
Regnald had envied Eustace many a day,--
Envied his fame, and that exceeding grace
And courtliness which he had learned at Court
Of Sidney, Raleigh, Essex, and the rest:
For when their father, lean Sir Egbert, died,
Eustace, whose fortune dangled at his thigh,--
A Damask blade,--had hastened to the Court
To line his purse, perchance to build a name;
And catching there the passion of the time,
He, with a score of doughty Devon lads,
Sailed with bold Drake into the Spanish seas;
Returning whence, with several ugly scars,--
Which made him lovelier in women's eyes,--
And many a chest of ingots,--not the less
These latter made him lovely,--sunned himself,
Sometimes at Court, sometimes at Garnaut Hall,--
At Court, by favor of the Virgin Queen,
For great Elizabeth had smiled on him.

So Regnald, who was neither good nor brave
Nor graceful, liked not Eustace from the start,
And this night hated him. With angry brows,
He sat in a bleak chamber of the Hall,
His fingers toying with his poniard's point
Abstractedly. Three times the ancient clock,
Bolt-upright like a mummy in its case,
Doled out the hour: at length the round red moon,
Rising above the ghostly poplar-tops,
Looked in on Regnald nursing his dark thought,
Looked in on the stiff portraits on the wall,
And dead Sir Egbert's empty coat-of-mail.

A quick step sounded on the gravel-walk,
And then came Eustace, humming a sea-song,
Of how the Grace of Devon, with ten guns,
And Master Raleigh on the quarter-deck,
Bore down and tackled the great galleon,
Madre de Dios, raked her fore and aft,
And took her bullion,--singing, light at heart,
His first love's first kiss warm upon his lip.
Straight onward came young Eustace to his death!
For hidden behind the arras