d
said.

'God help me,' the Queen answered. 'I stayed her petition till the
morrow. Is that not queening it enough?'

The Lady Rochford suddenly wrung her hands.

'I had rather,' she said, 'you had heard her and let her stay. Here
there are not people enough to guard you. You should have many scores of
people. This is a dreary place.'

'Heaven help me,' the Queen said. 'If I were such a queen as to be
affrighted, you would affright me. Tell me of your cousin that was a
sinful queen.'

The Lady Rochford raised her hands lamentably and bleated out--

'Ah God, not to-night!'

'You have been ready enough on other nights,' the Queen said. And,
indeed, it was so much the practice of this lady to talk always of her
cousin, whose death had affrighted her, that often the Queen had begged
her to cease. But to-night she was willing to hear, for she felt afraid
of no omens, and, being joyful, was full of pity for the dead
unfortunate. She began with slow, long motions to withdraw the great
pins from her hair. The deep silence settled down again, and she hummed
the melancholy and stately tune that goes with the words--

_'When all the little hills are hid in snow,_
_And all the small brown birds by frost are slain,_
_And sad and slow_
_The silly sheep do go,_
_All seeking shelter to and fro--_
_Come once again_
_To these familiar, silent, misty lands----'_

And--

'Aye,' she said; 'to these ancient and familiar lands of the dear
saints, please God, when the winter snows are upon them, once again
shall come the feet of God's messenger, for this is the joyfullest day
this land hath known since my namesake was cast down and died.'

Suddenly there were muffled cries from beyond the thick door in the
corridor, and on the door itself resounding blows. The Lady Rochford
gave out great shrieks, more than her feeble body could have been deemed
to hold.

'Body of God!' the Queen said, 'what is this?'

'Your cousin!' the Lady Rochford cried out. She came running to the
Queen, who, in standing up, had overset her heavy chair, and, falling to
her knees, she babbled out--'Your cousin! Oh, let it not all come again.
Call your guard. Let it not all come again'; and she clawed into the
Queen's skirt, uttering incomprehensible clamours.

'What? What? What?' Katharine said.

'He was with the Archbishop. Your cousin with the Archbishop. I heard
it. I sent to stay him if it were so'; and the old woman's teeth
crackl