I never killed before to-day, and I am not breathed as
yet."

Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw that
behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which (they
thought) King Richard had just risen, and stood erect upon the cushions
of it. They saw this Exton strike the King with his pole-axe, from
behind, and once only, and they knew no more was needed.

"By God!" said one of them in the ensuing stillness, and it was he who
bled the most, "that was a felon's blow."

But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. "I
charge you all to witness," he faintly said, "how willingly I render to
Caesar's daughter that which was ever hers."

Then Exton fretted, as with a little trace of shame: "Who would have
thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long?
Caesar's daughter, saith he! and dares _in extremis_ to pervert Holy
Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first
Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for
it. And yet--God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he
said--these Plantagenets."

THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL

VIII

The Story of the Scabbard

"_Ainsi il avoit trouve sa mie
Si belle qu'on put souhaiter.
N'avoit cure d'ailleurs plaider,
Fors qu'avec lui manoir et estre.
Bien est Amour puissant et maistre._"

THE EIGHTH NOVEL.--BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING'S
LOVE UNWITTINGLY, AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES
HIM OF THE LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; SO THAT HE
BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE TRIUMPHANTLY OCCUPIES
ANOTHER REALM AS YET UNMAPPED.

The Story of the Scabbard

In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second
monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence,
and nothing more, from the close wiles of Bolingbroke. The
circumstances have been recorded otherwhere. All persons, saving only
Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King Richard dead at
that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as a proceeding
taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body of Edward
Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel at Langley
Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three
set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully untrammelling world
wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.

Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothe