hich required
immediate attention. Accordingly she settled down to her needlework,
while the Regent of England leaned his head against her knee, and his
mother told him that ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near
Babylon encountered the King of Faery, and subsequently stripped the
atrocious Emir of both beard and daughter. All this the industrious
woman narrated in a low and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed Regent
attended and at the proper intervals gulped his cough-mixture.

You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the tent.
"We have conquered," he said. "Now, by the Face!"--thus, scoffingly,
he used her husband's favorite oath--"now, by the Face! there was never
a victory more complete! The Scottish army is as those sands which
dried the letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!"

"I rejoice," the Queen said, looking up from her sewing, "that we have
conquered, though in nature I expected nothing else-- Oh, horrible!"
She sprang to her feet with a cry of anguish: and here in little you
have the entire woman; the victory of her armament was to her a thing
of course, since her cause was just, whereas the loss of two front
teeth by John Copeland was a genuine calamity.

He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a
mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, surrounded
by the Queen's five retainers. "In the rout I took him," said John
Copeland; "though, as my mouth witnesses, I did not find this David
Bruce a tractable prisoner."

"Is that, then, the King of Scots?" Philippa demanded, as she mixed
salt and water for a mouth-wash; and presently: "Sire Edward should be
pleased, I think. Will he not love me a little now, John Copeland?"

John Copeland lifted either plump hand toward his lips. "He could not
choose," John Copeland said; "madame, he could no more choose but love
you than I could choose."

Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums and
then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was dead,
slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. "That is a pity," the Queen said;
and more lately: "There is left alive in England but one man to whom I
dare entrust the keeping of the King of Scots. My barons are sold to
him; if I retain Messire David by me, one or another lord will engineer
his escape within the week, and Sire Edward will be vexed. Yet listen,
John--" She unfolded her plan.

"I have long