and the archer had recognised the dead
face, they knew that the Lollard squire, Hugh Calverley, had saved the
life of the persecutor at the cost of his own.

He had spoken the simple truth. He could not fight, but he could die.
He could not write his name upon the world's roll of glory, but he could
do God's will.

The public opinion of earth accounts this a mean and unworthy object.
The public opinion of Heaven is probably of a different character.

Nothing was to be done for widow or child, for Hugh Calverley left
neither. He was no ascetic; he was merely a man who thought first of
how he might please the Lord, and who felt himself least fettered by
single life. So there was no love in his heart but the love of Christ,
and nothing on earth that he desired in comparison of Him.

And on earth he had no guerdon. Even the royal words of praise he did
not live to hear. But on the other side of the dark river passed so
quickly, there were the garland of honour, and the palm of victory, and
the King's "Well done, good and faithful servant!" Verily, also, he had
his reward.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The autumn was passing into winter before the news reached Constance
either of the battle of Agincourt or of the murder on Southampton Green.
At first she was utterly crushed and prostrated. The old legal leaven,
so hard to work out of the human conscience, wrought upon her with
tenfold force, and she declared that God was against her, and was
wreaking His wrath upon her for the lie which she had told in denying
the validity of her marriage. Was it not evidently so? she asked. Had
He not first bereft her of her darling, the precious boy whom her sin
had preserved to her? And now not only Edward, but the favourite
brother, Dickon, were gone likewise. Herself, her stepmother, her
widowed sisters-in-law [Note 1], and the two little children of Richard,
were alone left of the House of York. The news of Edward's death she
bore with comparative equanimity: it was the sudden and dreadful end of
Richard which so completely overpowered her.

"Hold thy peace, Maude!" she said mournfully, in answer to Maude's
tender efforts to console her. "God is against me and all mine House.
We have sinned; or rather, _I_ have sinned,--and have thus brought down
sorrow and mourning upon the hearts that were dearest to me. I owe a
debt; and it must needs be paid, even to the uttermost fa