faced his enemies.

"I am no traitor to my true King, and no heretic to the living God!" he
cried earnestly. "I was ever a true man to God, and to the King, and to
my Lady: touching which ye are not my judge, but God."

His voice was drowned by another roar of execration. Then he knelt
again--and the handkerchief fell. But just as the executioner raised
his arm--

"Just ere the falling axe did part
The burning brain from the true heart--"

One word trembled on the dying lips--"Custance!"

In another minute, lifting the severed head by its dark auburn hair, the
executioner shouted to the sovereign mob--"This is the head of a
traitor!"

"Thou liest!" broke in a low fierce whisper from Bertram Lyngern.

"I wis that, Master!" returned the poor executioner.

He was not the first man, nor the last, who has been required to
pronounce officially what his conscience individually refused to
sanction.

The severed head was sent to London, a ghastly gift to the usurper. It
was set up on London Bridge, beside that of Exeter. The body was
carried into the Castle, saved by the Mayor from insult; and a few days
afterwards they bore it by slow stages to Tewkesbury Abbey, and laid him
in his father's grave.

Surrey and Exeter died for their King alone. But it was only half for
King Richard that Salisbury and Le Despenser died; and the other half
was for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. They
were both hereditary Lollards and chiefs of the Lollard party; and they
were both beheaded, not by Henry's authority, but by a priest-ridden
mob. And at that Bar where the cup of cold water shall in no wise lose
its reward, surely such semi-martyrdom as that day beheld at Bristol
will not be forgotten before God.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.

"Jesu, in Thy dear love behold,
And set this soul in Thy safe fold."

These lines were spoken by the figure called "Pity," in the painting
termed the "Five Wells" or wounds of Christ.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

MOVES ON THE CHESSBOARD.

"O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for themselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true!"

_Tennyson_.

Three months had rolled away since that thirteenth of January which had
made Constance a widow. Her versatile, volatile nature soon recovered
the shock of her husband's violent death