he sings!"

They also remarked to each other, that though Fidele smiled so
sweetly, yet so sad a melancholy did overcloud his lovely face, as if
grief and patience had together taken possession of him.

For these her gentle qualities (or perhaps it was their near
relationship, though they knew it not) Imogen (or, as the boys called
her, _Fidele_) became the doating-piece of her brothers, and she
scarcely less loved them, thinking that but for the memory of her
dear Posthumus, she could live and die in the cave with these wild
forest-youths; and she gladly consented to stay with them, till she
was enough rested from the fatigue of travelling to pursue her way
to Milford-Haven. When the venison they had taken was all eaten, and
they were going out to hunt for more, Fidele could not accompany them
because she was unwell. Sorrow, no doubt, for her husband's cruel
usage, as well as the fatigue of wandering in the forest, was the
cause of her illness.

They then bid her farewel, and went to their hunt, praising all the
way the noble parts and graceful demeanour of the youth Fidele.

Imogen was no sooner left alone than she recollected the cordial
Pisanio had given her, and drank it off, and presently fell into a
sound and death-like sleep.

When Bellarius and her brothers returned from hunting, Polidore went
first into the cave, and supposing her asleep, pulled off his heavy
shoes, that he might tread softly and not awake her; so did true
gentleness spring up in the minds of these princely foresters: but
he soon discovered that she could not be awakened by any noise, and
concluded her to be dead, and Polidore lamented over her with dear and
brotherly regret, as if they had never from their infancy been parted.

Bellarius also proposed to carry her out into the forest, and there
celebrate her funeral with songs and solemn dirges, as was then the
custom.

Imogen's two brothers then carried her to a shady covert, and there
laying her gently on the grass, they sang repose to her departed
spirit, and covering her over with leaves and flowers, Polidore said,
"While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I will daily strew thy
sad grave. The pale primrose, that flower most like thy face; the
blue-bell, like thy clear veins; and the leaf of eglantine, which is
not sweeter than was thy breath; all these I will strew over thee.
Yea, and the furred moss in winter, when there are no flowers to cover
thy sweet corse."

When they