ven Exeter for sitting in
judgment on her brother the Earl of Arundel, and she rested not now till
she saw him stretched before her, a headless corpse.

The two Maudeleyns went towards Scotland. Richard was apprehended, and
executed. There is good reason to believe that John, escaped, and that
it was he who, in after years, personated King Richard at the Scottish
Court.

The Lollard friends, Salisbury and Le Despenser, determined to attempt
their escape together.

For a minute they waited, looking regretfully after Exeter: then Le
Despenser said to his squire--

"Haste, Lyngern!--for Cardiff!"

They rode hard all that day--wearily all that night. Over hill and
dale, fording rivers, pushing through dense forests, threading mountain
passes, wading across trackless swamps. Town after town was left
behind; river after river was followed or crossed; till at last, as the
sun was setting, they cantered along the banks of the broad Severn, with
the towers of Berkeley Castle rising in the distance.

It was here that Salisbury drew bridle.

"'Tis no good!" he said. "I can no more. My Lord, mine heart misgiveth
me that you be wending but to death. Had it been the pleasure of the
Lord that we should escape our enemies, well: but if we be to meet
death, let me meet it at home. Go you on to your home, an' it like you;
but for me, I rest this night at Berkeley, and with the morrow I turn
back to Bisham."

Le Despenser looked sadly in his face. It seemed as though his last
friend were leaving him.

"Be it as you list, my Lord of Salisbury," he said. "Only God go with
both of us!"

Who shall say that He did not, though the road lay through the dark
river? For on the other side was Paradise.

So the Lollard friends parted: and so went Salisbury to his death. For
he never reached Bisham; he only crept back to Cirencester, and there he
was recognised and taken, and beheaded by the mob.

A weary way lay still before Le Despenser and Bertram. They journeyed
over land; and many a Welsh mountain had to be scaled, and many a brook
forded, before--when men and horses were so exhausted that another day
of such toil felt like a physical impossibility--spread before them lay
the silver sea, and the sun shone on the grim square towers of Cardiff.

"Home!" whispered the noble fugitive, slackening his pace an instant, as
the beloved panorama broke upon his sight. "Now forward, Lyngern--
home!"

Down they galloped weari