molested and
retiring to the further end of the vessel.

There was no sound but the monotonous splash of the oars, and their regular
beat against the edge of the boat, as the two men pulled out into the wider
part of the river.

Above, the stars were coming out one by one, and the wide stretch of low
meadow-land and water lay in the purple haze of gathering shadows like an
unknown and undiscovered country, till it was lost in the overarching
canopy of the dim far-off heavens.

Mary Gifford felt strangely indifferent to all outward things as she sat
with her hands tightly clasped together under her cloak, and in her heart
only one thought had room--that she was in a few short hours to clasp her
boy in her arms.

So over-mastering was this love and hungry yearning of the mother for her
child, that his condition--stricken by fever, and that of his father lying
at the very gates of death--were almost forgotten.

'If only he knows my arms are round him,' she thought; 'if only I can hear
his voice call me _mother_, I will die with him content.'

After a few hours, when there were lines of dawn in the eastern sky, Mary
felt the barge was being moored to the river bank; and her guide, rising
from his seat, came towards her, gave her his hand and said,--

'We have now to go on foot for some distance, to the place where your son
lies. Are you able for this?'

For Mary was stiff and cramped with her position in the barge for so long a
time, and she would have fallen as she stepped out, had not one of the
watermen caught her, saying,--

'Steady, Madam! steady!'

After a few tottering steps, Mary recovered herself, and said,--

'The motion of walking will be good for me; let us go forward.'

It was a long and weary tramp through spongy, low-lying land, and the way
seemed interminable.

At last, just as the sun was sending shafts of light across river and
swamp--making them glow like burnished silver, and covering every tall
spike of rush and flag with diamonds--a few straggling cottages or huts
came in sight.

A clump of pollards hid the cluster of buildings which formed the nucleus
of the little hamlet, till they were actually before a low, irregular block
of cottages, and at the door of one of these Mary's guide stopped.

'A few of our brethren took refuge here after the taking of Axel and the
burning of our habitation there. We are under the protection of the Duke of
Parma, who is advancing with an army for the