"Think you my love may atone for his treachery?" said the earl eagerly. "Fain would I think so! I have been wild in my youth, and cowardly in doing no more valiant battle against the curse laid upon me, but I have ever loved my king and been true to his cause. Fain would I have fought a longer fight for him, but it has been otherwise willed, and in the comfort of his gracious message sent me yestere'en in good Master Taylor's letter, I can die content. His 'faithful friend' he calls me; ay, so I have ever been! Not even you, Percival, nor my dear and honoured physician who has tended me in my wildest frenzies, and gone before me to reap the reward of his faithful service, have e'er heard me breathe a word against my sovereign!" "Nay," said Shanno proudly, "it shall ever be said of the last of the Bryn Afons, that he was a valiant soldier and gallant defender of his king and country, and that, shaking off at last the cruel fetters which had bound so many generations, he died bravely of honourable wounds, a willing victim to his love for his friend." "'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,'" said the chaplain gently. "Rejoice, my lord, that in this you have been counted worthy to follow in the steps of One who spake such noble words, and shrank not from putting them into yet nobler action." A beautiful light shone in the earl's blue eyes, in which the old restlessness had during these months of illness been slowly giving place to a look of quiet peace, and he looked from his young chaplain's earnest face--already glowing with that vision of God which is promised to the "pure in heart"--to the sweet countenance of his daughter, with ineffable love and tenderness. "In that none can be closer followers of Him than you, my children," he said with a sad smile; "for you, rather than bring ill upon unknown generations, have given up all that this life holds most dear, and for Him have in truth 'laid down your lives!' The thought that I must die and leave no heir to my ancient name has been to me a grievous sorrow, and such is the vanity of earthly ambition that I have but on this my dying bed been able to acquiesce cheerfully in your self-sacrifice. But now let a father's blessing bid you each God-speed on your long path of duty, and ever cheer you with the knowledge that he too with enlarged vision can now look with you beyond this fleeting world and its passing joys, and realise the immortal bliss which awaits his suffering children in the world to come." ... And when, not many days later, they closed his eyes and knelt beside his worn-out frame in silent prayer and tears, the lovers felt that by his words another link had been forged in that golden chain which bound them; and their grief at his loss, like that of his ever-faithful villagers, was soothed to thankful quietness by the thought that at last a Bryn Afon had passed to his last home in peace. CHAPTER XXXVII. FETTERS OF GOLD.