invention, the labour and the genius; but the
superstition and the folly and the delusion had their value, and the
impostor who destroyed the engine clutched the jewel!

From the leafless tree was suspended the dead body of a man; beneath,
lay a female, dead too; but whether by the hand of man or the mercy
of Heaven, there was no sign to tell. Scholar and Child, Knowledge
and Innocence, alike were cold; the grim Age had devoured them, as it
devours ever those before, as behind, its march, and confounds, in one
common doom, the too guileless and the too wise!

"Why crowd ye thus, knaves?" said a commanding voice.

"Ha, Lord Hastings! approach! behold!" exclaimed Alwyn.

"Ha, ha!" shouted Graul, as she led her sisters from the spot, wheeling,
and screaming, and tossing up their timbrels, "ha! the witch and her
lover! Ha, ha! Foul is fair! Ha, ha! Witchcraft and death go together,
as thou mayest learn at the last, sleek wooer."

And, peradventure, when, long years afterwards, accusations of
witchcraft, wantonness, and treason resounded in the ears of Hastings,
and, at the signal of Gloucester, rushed in the armed doomsman, those
ominous words echoed back upon his soul!

At that very hour the gates of the Tower were thrown open to the
multitude. Fresh from his victory, Edward and his brothers had gone
to render thanksgivings at St. Paul's (they were devout, those three
Plantagenets!), thence to Baynard's Castle, to escort the queen and her
children once more to the Tower. And, now, the sound of trumpets stilled
the joyous uproar of the multitude, for in the balcony of the casement
that looked towards the chapel the herald had just announced that King
Edward would show himself to the people. On every inch of the courtyard,
climbing up wall and palisade, soldier, citizen, thief, harlot, age,
childhood, all the various conditions and epochs of multiform life,
swayed, clung, murmured, moved, jostled, trampled,--the beings of the
little hour!

High from the battlements against the weltering beam floated Edward's
conquering flag,--a sun shining to the sun. Again, and a third time,
rang the trumpets, and on the balcony, his crown upon his head, but
his form still sheathed in armour, stood the king. What mattered to the
crowd his falseness and his perfidy, his licentiousness and cruelty? All
vices ever vanish in success! Hurrah for King Edward! THE MAN OF THE AGE
suited the age, had valour for its war and cunning for its pea