.

"You are a model of thoughtfulness, my lord," said Gloucester with one
of his strange smiles, as he buckled on his sword and led the way
toward the horses.

Two hours after leaving Northampton the cavalcade, now traveling the
Roman road, approached the crossing of the Ouse at the boundary of
Buckinghamshire. Stoney Stratford lay just south of the river. On the
northern bank of the stream Gloucester drew rein and the column halted.
A moment before he had been laughing, apparently in the best of humor.
Now his face was stern as stone and his voice pitiless as Fate as,
turning to the Earl of Rivers who was riding beside him, he said:

"My lord, before we proceed farther, there are a few matters between us
that require adjustment."

Rivers' face paled suddenly, and involuntarily he bore so heavily on
the bit that his horse reared high. Taken unawares, his usually facile
mind was confused by the abruptness of Richard's words and the calm
determination plainly foreshadowed in them. Trained by years of
experience in a Court where intrigue imbrued the very atmosphere,
ordinarily he was equal to any emergency. But all his schemes of the
past were as gossamer to the conspiracy in which he was now entangled,
and since the previous evening--when the unexpected arrival of
Gloucester had hung their whole plot upon his shoulders until he got
the King to London--the strain on his nerves had been terrific. He had
thought to play the game out in the Capital, not on the lonely bank of
a river in distant Northampton; and it is small wonder that under all
the circumstances Anthony Woodville fell before Richard Plantagenet,
whose equal England had known but twice before, in the first
Plantagenet and the first Edward, and knew but twice thereafter, in
Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange.

"This is scarce a place for discussion, my Lord Duke," said Rivers,
striving to calm his restive horse. "If, as your words imply, there be
aught of controversy between us, it were best to settle it in London.
Yonder is Stoney Stratford, and it will not profit the King for us to
quarrel here."

"Methinks, Sir Earl, that I am quite as capable as you of judging what
shall work to Edward's profit," replied Gloucester curtly; "and I
choose to settle it here, and not to annoy him with matters too weighty
for his young brain."

"It is your own profit and not your King's that you seek," said Rivers.
"I decline to hold further discussion or to qu