be frequently
engaged in mental prayer. Burnet and Tenison remained many hours in the
sick-room. He professed to them his firm belief in the truth of the
Christian religion, and received the sacrament from their hands with
great seriousness. The antechambers were crowded all night with lords
and privy-councillors. He ordered several of them to be called in, and
exerted himself to take leave of them with a few kind and cheerful
words. Among the English who were admitted to his bedside were
Devonshire and Ormond. But there were in the crowd those who felt as no
Englishman could feel, friends of his youth, who had been true to him,
and to whom he had been true, through all vicissitudes of fortune; who
had served him with unalterable fidelity when his Secretaries of State,
his Treasury, and his Admiralty had betrayed him; who had never on any
field of battle, or in an atmosphere tainted with loathsome and deadly
disease, shrunk from placing their own lives in jeopardy to save his,
and whose truth he had at the cost of his own popularity rewarded with
bounteous munificence. He strained his feeble voice to thank
Auverquerque for the affectionate and loyal services of thirty years. To
Albemarle he gave the keys of his closet and of his private drawers.
'You know,' he said, 'what to do with them.' By this time he could
scarcely respire. 'Can this,' he said to the physicians, 'last long?' He
was told that the end was approaching. He swallowed a cordial, and asked
for Bentinck. Those were his last articulate words. Bentinck instantly
came to the bedside, bent down, and placed his ear close to the king's
mouth. The lips of the dying man moved, but nothing could be heard. The
king took the hand of his earliest friend, and pressed it tenderly to
his heart. In that moment, no doubt, all that had cast a slight passing
cloud over their long and pure friendship was forgotten. It was now
between seven and eight in the morning. He closed his eyes, and gasped
for breath. The bishops knelt down and read the commendatory prayer.
When it ended William was no more!"

It was assuredly the stumbling of his horse against a mole-hill that led
more immediately to the death of this great monarch. It is but one link
in the chain of many providences affecting his life. We all remember the
schoolboy ditty--

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe the rider was lost;
For want of the rider the battle was lost;
For want