tood victorious at
Agincourt. The Church one again--the Holy Sepulchre redeemed! It seemed
then before my eyes, and that I was the man called to do it.'

'So it may be yet,' said James. 'Sickness alters everything, and raises
mountains before us.'

'It may be so,' said Henry; 'and yet--Jerusalem! Jerusalem! It was my
father's cry; it was King Edward's cry; it was St. Louis' cry; and yet
they never got there.'

'St. Louis was far on his way,' said James.

'Ay! he never turned aside!' said Henry, sighing, and moving restlessly
and wearily with something of returning fever.

"'O bona patria, lumina sobria te speculantur--"

Boy, are you there?' as, in turning, his eye fell on Malcolm. 'Take
warning: the straight road is the best. You see, I have never come to
Jerusalem.' Then again he murmured:

"'Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur;
Non breve vivere, non breve plangere, retribuetur."

And James, seeing that nothing lulled him like song, offered to sing that
mysteriously beautiful rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix.

'Ay, prithee do so,' said Henry. 'There's a rest there, when the
Agincourt lay rings hollow. Well, there is a Jerusalem where our
shortcomings are made up; only the straight way--the straight way.'

Malcolm took his part with James in singing the rhythm, which he had
learnt long ago at Coldingham, and which thus in every note brought back
the vanished aspirations and self-dedication to 'the straight way.'

For such, an original purpose of self-devotion must ever be--not of
course exclusively to the monastic life; but whoever lowers his aims of
serving God under any worldly inducement, is deviating from the straight
way: and, thought Malcolm, if King Harry feels Agincourt an empty word
beside the song of Sion, must not all I have sought for be a very vanity?

Sometimes dozing, but sometimes restless, and with the pain of breathing
constantly increasing on him, Henry wore through the greater part of the
day, upon the river, until it was necessary to land, and be taken through
the forest in his litter. He was now obliged to be lifted from the
barge; and his weariness rendered the conveyance very distressing, save
that his patient smile never faded; and still he said, 'All will be well
when I come to my Kate!'

Alas! when the gates were reached, James hardly knew how to tell him that
the Queen had gone that morning to Paris with her mother. Yet still he
was cheerf