good-humoured, laughing recklessness, which had once
drawn a "God bless him!" from all on whom rested his light-blue joyous
eye. He was unarmed, save by a corselet richly embossed with gold. His
short manteline of crimson velvet, his hosen of white cloth laced with
gold, and his low horseman's boots of Spanish leather curiously carved
and broidered, with long golden spurs; his plumed and jewelled cap;
his white charger with housings enriched with pearls and blazing with
cloth-of-gold; his broad collar of precious stones, with the order of
St. George; his general's truncheon raised aloft, and his Plantagenet
banner borne by the herald over his royal head, caught the eyes of the
crowd only the more to rivet them on an aspect ill fitting the triumph
of a bloodless victory. At his left hand, where the breadth of the
streets permitted, rode Henry Lee, the mayor, uttering no word, unless
appealed to, and then answering but with chilling reverence and dry
monosyllables.

A narrow winding in the streets, which left Warwick and Clarence alone
side by side, gave the former the opportunity he had desired.

"How, prince and son," he said in a hollow whisper, "is it with this
brow of care that thou saddenest our conquest, and enterest the capital
we gain without a blow?"

"By Saint George!" answered Clarence, sullenly, and in the same tone,
"thinkest thou it chafes not the son of Richard of York, after such
toils and bloodshed, to minister to the dethronement of his kin and the
restoration of the foe of his race?"

"Thou shouldst have thought of that before," returned Warwick, but with
sadness and pity in the reproach.

"Ay, before Edward of Lancaster was made my lord and brother," retorted
Clarence, bitterly.

"Hush!" said the earl, "and calm thy brow. Not thus didst thou speak at
Amboise; either thou wert then less frank or more generous. But regrets
are vain: we have raised the whirlwind, and must rule it."

And with that, in the action of a man who would escape his own thoughts,
Warwick made his black steed demivolte; and the crowd shouted again
the louder at the earl's gallant horsemanship, and Clarence's dazzling
collar of jewels.

While thus the procession of the victors, the nominal object of all this
mighty and sudden revolution--of this stir and uproar, of these shining
arms and flaunting banners, of this heaven or hell in the deep passions
of men--still remained in his prison-chamber of the Tower, a true type
of