; it
reached the ruthless friar, and he gave the sign to the hireling at his
shoulder; it reached the priest as he entered, unmoved, the church
of Hadley. And the bell, changing its note into a quicker and sweeter
chime, invited the living to prepare for death, and the soul to rise
above the cruelty and the falsehood, and the pleasure and the pomp,
and the wisdom and the glory of the world! And suddenly, as the
chime ceased, there was heard, from the eminence hard by, a shriek of
agony,--a female shriek,--drowned by the roar of a bombard in the field
below.

On pressed the Yorkists through the pass forced by Alwyn. "Yield thee,
stout fellow," said the bold trader to Hilyard, whose dogged energy,
resembling his own, moved his admiration, and in whom, by the accent in
which Robin called his men, he recognized a north-countryman; "yield,
and I will see that thou goest safe in life and limb. Look round, ye are
beaten."

"Fool!" answered Hilyard, setting his teeth, "the People are never
beaten!" And as the words left his lips, the shot from the recharged
bombard shattered him piecemeal.

"On for London and the crown!" cried Alwyn,--"the citizens are the
People!"

At this time, through the general crowd of the Yorkists, Ratcliffe and
Lovell, at the head of their appointed knights, galloped forward to
accomplish their crowning mission.

Behind the column which still commemorates "the great battle" of that
day, stretches now a trilateral patch of pasture-land, which faces a
small house. At that time this space was rough forest-ground, and
where now, in the hedge, rise two small trees, types of the diminutive
offspring of our niggard and ignoble civilization, rose then two huge
oaks, coeval with the warriors of the Norman Conquest. They grew close
together; yet, though their roots interlaced, though their branches
mingled, one had not taken nourishment from the other. They stood, equal
in height and grandeur, the twin giants of the wood. Before these
trees, whose ample trunks protected them from the falchions in the rear,
Warwick and Montagu took their last post. In front rose, literally,
mounds of the slain, whether of foe or friend; for round the two
brothers to the last had gathered the brunt of war, and they towered
now, almost solitary in valour's sublime despair, amidst the wrecks of
battle and against the irresistible march of fate. As side by side they
had gained this spot, and the vulgar assailants drew back, lea