ndfather, bowing his white head, `Ah, Dame! God grant
us an upright judge, and a just sentence; and that if we cannot have it
in this world, we may find it in another.'

"The charges laid against them were then read by the Marshal; and the
barons gave sentence--of course as Dame Isabelle wished. The Lord of
Arundel and Surrey, the premier Earl of England, [see Note 1], and the
aged white-haired Earl of Winchester, [see Note 2], were doomed to the
death of traitors.

"Saint Denis' Day--child, it gives me a shudder to name it! We were
within the castle, and they set up the gibbet before our eyes. Before
the eyes of the son of the one man, the wife and son of the other! I
remember catching up Isabel, and running with her into an inner
chamber--any whither to be out of sight of that awful thing. I
remember, too, that the Lady of Arundel, having seen all she could bear,
fainted away on the rushes, and I laid her gently down, and nursed her
back into life. But when she came to herself, she cried--`Is it all
over? O cruel Joan, to have made me live! I might have died with my
lord.' At last it was all over: over--for that time. And God had taken
no notice. He had not opened the heavens and thundered down His great
ire. I suppose that must have been on account of some high festival
they had in Heaven in honour of Saint Denis, and God was too busy,
listening to the angels, to have any time for us.

"But that night, ere the dawn, my father softly entered the chamber
where we maidens slept. He had been closeted half the night with the
King, taking counsel how to escape the cruel jaws of the tigress; and
now he roused us, and bade us farewell. He and the King would set forth
in a little boat, and endeavour to reach Wales. They thought us,
however, safer in the castle. We watched them embark in the grey dawn,
ere men were well astir; and they rowed off toward Wales. Would God
they had stayed where they were!--but God had not ended the festival of
Saint Denis.

"Twelve days that little boat rode the silver Severn; beaten back,
beaten back at every tide, the waves rough, and the wind contrary. And
at length Sir Henry Beaumont, the devil whispering to him who were in
the boat, set forth in pursuit. [See Note 3.]

"We saw them taken. The Monday after Saint Luke, Edward of Caernarvon,
sometime King of England, and Hugh Le Despenser, sometime Earl of
Gloucester, were led captives into Bristol, and delivered to the