Matilda, I ween, had done worse deeds at Reading than Eustace did at St. Edmund's Bury, and, certes, the patrons and protectors of our house, our Ladie the Virgin, and St. James, and St. John the evangelist, were not less powerful to punish than St. Edmund the king and martyr; nevertheless Matilda was let live, and the young Eustace perished in his prime. But these things are not to be scanned by mortal eye, and the judgments of heaven are not always immediate, and it might not have been so much in vengeance for Eustace's great sin in robbing the monks of St. Edmund's Bury of their corn, as in mercy to the suffering people of England, that the son of King Stephen was so suddenly smitten and removed. The monks of St. Edmund did, however, give out that it was their saint who slew him for his sin, causing the first morsel of the stolen victual he put into his mouth to drive him into a frenzy, whereof he died. Others there were who accounted for his opportune death by alleging that some subtile poison had been administered to him; but of this was there never any proof. Our young Lord Arthur, without denying the great provocation he had given unto St. Edmund, did always think that his brain had been touched ever since his father held the conference above Wallingford with Duke Henry, and that a great gust of passion killed him. But whatever was the cause of his death, and however sad was that event in itself, he was surely dead, and it was just as sure that the kingdom would be the better for it. If few had followed him while he was alive, still fewer stayed to do honour to his remains; but Arthur, with a very sincere grief, and with all respect and piety, carried the body of his master to the sea-side, and thence by water into Kent, and saw it interred at Feversham by the side of Queen Maud, with all the rites and obsequies of holy church. Fidelity could not go beyond this; the great arbiter, Death, had freed him from his allegiance and vows to the prince, and so from the honoured grave in Feversham Abbey, Arthur de Bohun rode with all possible speed unto Caversham. So true was it, that nothing that man could do could keep Alice and him long asunder.