is in her long white chemise, standing at the window looking down
upon the market square of a small town.

The moon picks out every detail of carving on the church, and throws
the porch into a dense gloom. Not a soul is about, not a light is to
be seen, not a sound is to be heard.

The lady is about to leave the window, when she hears a sound in the
street below. She peers down, and sees a man running towards the
church; he goes in and out of the shadows. From her open window she
can hear his heavy breathing. Now he darts into the shadow of the
porch, and then out of the gloom comes a furious knocking, and a voice
crying, 'Sanctuary!'

The lady at her window knows that cry well. Soon the monks in the
belfry will awake and ring the Galilee-bell.

The Galilee-bell tolls, and the knocking ceases.

A few curious citizens look out. A dog barks. Then a door opens and
closes with a bang.

There is silence in the square again, but the lady still stands at her
window, and she follows the man in her thoughts.

Now he is admitted by the monks, and goes at once to the altar of the
patron-saint of the church, where he kneels and asks for a coroner.

The coroner, an aged monk, comes to him and confesses him. He tells
his crime, and renounces his rights in the kingdom; and then, in that
dark church, he strips to his shirt and offers his clothes to the
sacrist for his fee. Ragged, mud-stained clothes, torn cloak, all fall
from him in a heap upon the floor of the church.

Now the sacrist gives him a large cloak with a cross upon the
shoulder, and, having fed him, gives him into the charge of the
under-sheriff, who will next day pass him from constable to constable
towards the coast, where he will be seen on board a ship, and so pass
away, an exile for ever.

The night is cold. The lady pulls a curtain across the window, and
then, stripping herself of her chemise, she gets into bed.

HENRY THE FIRST

Reigned thirty-five years: 1100-1135.

Born 1068. Married to Matilda of Scotland, 1100; to
Adela of Louvain, 1121.

THE MEN

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry I.; two types of shoe}]

The Father of Popular Literature, Gerald of Wales, says: 'It is better
to be dumb than not to be understood. New times require new fashions,
and so I have thrown utterly aside the old and dry methods of some
authors, and aimed at adopting the fashion of speech which is actually
in vogue to-day.'

Vainly, pe