er moving or looking up. And
James, who knew from Salisbury that he had neither slept nor eaten since
sixty miles off he had met a worse report of his brother, watched him
anxiously till, when evening began to fall, he murmured, 'There is the
captain of--of--at--but--'--the pen slipped from his fingers, and he
said, 'I can no more!'

The overtaxed powers, strained so long--mind, memory, and all--were
giving way under the mere force of excessive fatigue. He rose from his
seat, but stumbled, like one blind, as James upheld him, and led him away
to the nearest bed-chamber, where, almost while the attendants divested
him of the heavy boots and cuirass he had never paused all these hours to
remove, he dropped into a sleep of sheer exhaustion.

James, who was likewise wearied out with watching, turned towards his own
quarters; but, in so doing, he could not but turn aside to the chapel,
where before the altar had been laid all that was left of King Henry.
There he lay, his hands clasped over a crucifix, clad in the same rich
green and crimson robes in which he had ridden to meet his Queen at
Vincennes but three short months before; the golden circlet from his
helmet was on his head, but it could not give additional majesty to the
still and severe sweetness of his grand and pure countenance, so youthful
in the lofty power that high aspirations had imprinted on it, yet so
intensely calm in its marble rest, more than ever with the look of the
avenging unpitying angel. To James, it was chiefly the face of the man
whom he had best loved and admired, in spite of their strange connection;
but to Malcolm, who had as usual followed him closely, it was verily a
look from the invisible world--a look of awful warning and reproof,
almost as if the pale set lips were unclosing to demand of him where he
was in the valley of shadows, through which the way lay to Jerusalem. If
Henry had turned back, and warned him at the gate of the heavenly Sion,
surely such would have been his countenance; and Malcolm, when, like
James, he had sprinkled the holy water on the white brow, and crossed
himself while the low chant of Psalms from kneeling priests went up
around him--clasped his two hands close together, and breathed forth the
words, 'Oh, I have wandered far! O great King, I will never leave the
straight way again! I will cast aside all worldly aims! O God, and the
Saints, help me not to lose my way again!'

He would have tarried on still