alone dares to
encounter the Scot. She will lead them into battle--and by God! there
is no braver person under heaven than yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David,
I perceive that your venture is lost, for those men would within the
moment follow her to storm hell if she desired it."

He meditated and more lately shrugged. "And so would I," said Hastings.

A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bare-headed and very
hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen's side. "Madame and
Queen," said Hastings, "I rejoice that my recent illness is departed.
I shall, by God's grace, on this day drive the Bruce from England."

Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her emotions,
but none was visible upon the honest face; yet one plump hand had
fallen into the big-veined hand of Hastings. "I welcome back the
gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was about to lead your army, my
friend, since there was no one else to do it, but I was hideously
afraid. At bottom every woman is a coward."

"You were afraid to do it," said the Marquess, "but you were going to
do it, because there was no one else to do it! Ho, madame! had I an
army of such cowards I would drive the Scot not past the Border but
beyond the Orkneys."

The Queen then said, "But you are unarmed."

"Highness," he replied, "it is surely apparent that I, who have played
the traitor to two monarchs within the same day, cannot with either
decency or comfort survive that day." He turned upon the lords and
bishops twittering about his horse's tail. "You merchandise, get back
to your stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your
families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this
day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest woman
our time has known." Immediately the English forces marched toward
Merrington.

Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John Copeland. He
had ridden off, she was informed, armed, in company with five of her
immediate retainers. She considered this strange, but made no comment.

You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in
beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing of
the sort. As you have heard, she considered her cause to be so
clamantly just that to expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits
were an impertinence; it was not conceivable that He would fail her;
and in any event, she had in hand a deal of sewing w