Once more Michel made a journey--alone--to the Ecréhos, and there, under the ruins of the old Abbey of Val Richer, he buried the twain he had loved. Not once in all the terrible hours had he shed a tear; not once had his hand trembled; his face was like stone and his eyes burned with an unearthly light. He did not pray beside the graves. But he knelt and kissed the earth again and again. He had doffed his robes of peace, and now wore the garb of a soldier, armed at all points fully. Rising from his knees, he turned his face towards Jersey. “Only mine! Only mine!” he said, aloud, in a dry, bitter voice. In the whole island, only his loved ones had died of the plague. The holiness and charity and love of Michel and Angèle had ended so! When once more he set forth upon the Channel, he turned his back on Jersey and shaped his course towards France, having sent Elizabeth his last excuses for declining a service which would have given him honor, fame, and regard. He was bent upon a higher duty. Not long did he wait for the death he craved. Next year, in a Huguenot sortie from Anvers, he was slain. He died with these words on his lips: “Maintenant, Angèle!” * * * * * In due time the island people forgot them both, but the Seigneur of Rozel caused a stone to be set up on the highest point of land that faces France, and on the stone were carved the names of Michel and Angèle. Having done much hard service for his country and for England’s Queen, Lemprière at length hung up his sword and gave his years to peace. From the Manor of Rozel he was wont to repair constantly to the little white house, which remained as the two had left it--his own by order of the Queen--and there, as time went on, he spent most of his days. To the last he roared with laughter if ever the name of Buonespoir was mentioned in his presence; he swaggered ever before the royal court and De Carteret of St. Ouen’s; and he spoke proudly of his friendship with the Duke’s Daughter, who had admired the cut of his jerkin at the court of Elizabeth. But in the house where Angèle had lived he moved about as though in the presence of a beloved sleeper he would not awake. * * * * * Michel and Angèle had had their few years of exquisite life and love, and had gone; Lemprière had longer measure of life and little love, and who shall say which had more profit of breath and being? The generations have passed away, and the Angel of Equity hath a smiling pity as she scans the scales and the weighing of the past. THE END “Come hither, O come hither, There’s a bride upon her bed; They have strewn her o’er with roses, There are roses ’neath her head: Life is love and tears and laughter, But the laughter it is dead-- Sing the way to the valley, to the valley! Hey, but the roses they are red!” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Ladder of Swords, by Gilbert Parker