will
come hither and pray by the side of those whom I hear groaning in their
pain.'

'I will e'en do as you wish, and send my servant back with cordials and
linen for bands, and such food as may support you in your watch.'

When Madam Gruithuissens departed, Humphrey and Mary Gifford were alone
together. The servant who had been sent with the news keeping watch at the
door outside, and Humphrey, for the time, seemed to go over, half
unconsciously, the scenes of the taking of Axel, and Mary listened to it
not exactly with half-hearted sympathy, but with the perpetually recurring
cry at her heart that God would restore to her her only son.

It is ever so--the one anxiety, the one centre of interest to ourselves,
which may seem of little importance to others, drives out all else. All
other cares and griefs, and grand achievements of which we hear, are but as
dust in the balance, when weighed down by our own especial sorrow, or
suspense is hardest, perhaps, to bear, which is pressing upon us at the
time.

Mary Gifford had often told herself that hope was dead within her, and that
she had resigned her boy into God's hands, that she should never clasp him
in her arms again, nor look into those lustrous eyes of which she had
spoken to Humphrey. But hope is slow to die in human hearts. It springs up
again from the very ashes of despair, and Humphrey Ratcliffe's words had
quickened it into life. Thus, as Humphrey described the events of the past
forty-eight hours, and forgot pain and weariness in the enthusiasm for the
courage and heroism of Sir Philip Sidney, his listener was picturing the
blazing house, the flames, the suffocating smoke, and the boy whose face
had been revealed to Humphrey as the face of her lost child.

She was haunted by the certainty that the man who had stabbed Humphrey was
her husband, and that it was he who had called the boy by name, and
snatched him from his deliverer.

This was the undercurrent of thought in Mary's mind, while she heard
Humphrey describe to her uncle, who promptly obeyed the summons, the
capture of the four citadels and rich spoil.

'Ours was but a little band,' Humphrey was saying, 'but three thousand foot
soldiers. I was one of the five hundred of Sir Philip's men, and proud am I
to say so. It was at his place we met, on the water in front of Flushing,
and then by boat and on foot, with stealthy tread lest we should disturb
the sleepers.

'Within a mile of Axel Sir Philip