owed the beat of lessening footfalls, while
the nightingale improvised an envoi.

But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with
the bird.

Sang Jehan Kuypelant:

"Hearken and heed, Melaenis!
For all that the litany ceased
When Time had pilfered the victim,
And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,
And set astir in the temple
Where burned the fires of thy shrine
The owls and wolves of the desert--
Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!

"For I have followed, nor faltered--
Adrift in a land of dreams
Where laughter and pity and terror
Commingle as confluent streams,
I have seen and adored the Sidonian,
Implacable, fair and divine--
And bending low, have implored thee
To hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!"

It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other
matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of
grace 1346, Master John Copeland--as men now called Jehan Kuypelant,
now secretary to the Queen of England,--brought his mistress the
unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty
thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa
with the kingdom's arbitress--Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King
Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in
France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.

This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they
narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from
the French prison of the Chatelet. You may appraise her dominion by
this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and
in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch
back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from
Southampton on Saint George's day.

These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already
Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King
David.

The Countess presently exclaimed: "Let them weep for this that must!
My place is not here."

Philippa said, half hopefully, "Do you forsake Sire Edward,
Catherine?"

"Madame and Queen," the Countess answered, "in this world every man
must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of
Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid
waste. Were there a