The hunters rode off, Walter Tyrrel alone with the King. By-and-by a cry rang through the forest that the King was slain. There was an eager gathering into the beech-shaded dell round the knoll of Stoney Cross, where, beneath an oak tree, lay the bleeding corpse of the Red William, an arrow in his heart. Terror fell on some, the hope of self-aggrandizement actuated others. Walter Tyrrel never drew rein till he came to the coast, and there took ship for France, whence he went to the holy wars. Prince Henry rode as fast in the opposite direction. William de Breteuil (eldest son of Fitz-Osborn) galloped off to secure his charge, the treasury at Winchester, and; when he arrived, found the prince before him, trying to force the keepers to give him the keys, which they refused to do except at their master’s bidding. Breteuil, who, as well as Henry, had sworn that Robert should reign if William died childless, tried to defend his rights, but was overpowered by some friends of Henry, who now came up to the forest; and the next morning the prince set off to London, taking with him the crown, and caused the Bishop of London to anoint and crown him four days after his brother’s death. No one cared for the corpse beneath the oak, and there it lay till evening, when one Purkiss, a charcoal-burner of the forest hamlet of Minestead, came by, lifted it up, and carried it on his rude cart, which dripped with the blood flowing from the wound, to Winchester. There the cathedral clergy buried it in a black stone coffin, ridged like the roof of a house, beneath the tower of the cathedral, many people looking on, but few grieving, and some deeming it shame that so wicked a man should be allowed to lie within a church. These thought it a judgment, when, next year, the tower fell down over the grave, and it was rebuilt a little further westward with some of the treasure Bishop Walkelyn had left. Never did any man’s history more awfully show a hardened, impenitent heart, going back again to sin after a great warning, then cut off by an instantaneous death, in the full tide of prosperity, in the very height of health and strength--for he was but in his fortieth year. A spur of William Rufus is still preserved at the forest town of Lyndhurst; Purkiss’s descendant still dwells at Minestead; part of the way by which he travelled is called the King’s Lane, and the oak long remained at Stoney Cross to mark the spot where the King fell; and when, in 1745, the remains of the wood mouldered away, a stone was set up in its place; but the last of the posterity of William the Conqueror’s “high deer” were condemned in the course of the year 1831. A Minestead churl, whose wonted trade Was burning charcoal in the glade, Outstretched amid the gorse The monarch found: and in his wain He raised, and to St. Swithin’s fane Conveyed the bleeding corse.