wilt Thou look on? Rescue my soul from their
destructions, mine only one from the lions.'

"`And now, Lord, what wait I for?'

"`Who shall give me wings like a dove?--and I will flee away, and be at
rest!'" [Vulgate version].

At last the prisoner closed the book, and spoke in his own words to his
heavenly Friend--the only friend whom he had in all the world, except
the wife who was a helpless prisoner like himself.

"Lord God, Thy will be done! Grant unto me patience to await Thy time;
but, O fair Father, I lack rest!"

And just as his voice ceased, the heavy door rolled back, and the
messenger of rest came in.

He did not look like a messenger of rest. But all God's messengers are
not angels. And there was little indeed of the angel in this man's
composition. His figure would have been tall but for a deformity which
his enemies called a hump back, and his friends merely an overgrown
shoulder; and his face would have been handsome but for its morose,
scowling expression, which by no means betokened an amiable character.

The two cousins stood and looked at each other. The prisoner was the
grandson of Henry of Bolingbroke, and the visitor was the grandson of
Richard of Conisborough.

There were a few words on each side--contemptuous taunts, and sharp
accusations, on the one side,--low, patient replies on the other. Then
came a gleam of something flashing in the dim light, and the dagger of
the visitor was sheathed in the pale prisoner's heart.

At rest, at last: safe, and saved, and with God.

It was a cruel, brutal, cold-blooded murder. But was it nothing else?
Was there in it no operation of those Divine wheels which "grind slowly,
yet exceeding small?"--no visitation, by Him to whom vengeance
belongeth, of the sins of the guilty fathers upon the guiltless son--
vengeance for the broken heart of Richard of Bordeaux, for the judicial
murder of Richard of Conisborough, for the dreary imprisoned girlhood of
Anne Mortimer, and--last, not least--for the long, slow years of moral
torture, ending with the bitter cup forced into the dying hand of the
White Rose of Langley?

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

Note 1. Richard of Conisborough married secondly, and probably chiefly
with the view of securing a mother for his children, Maude Clifford, a
daughter of the great Lollard House of Clifford of Cumberland. She
survived him many years.

Note 2. The Psalter is