“Hasty news to thee I bring, Henry, thou art now a king; Mark the words, and heed them well, Which to thee in sooth I tell, And recall them in the hour Of thy royal state and power.” For the space of almost a minute after she had ceased, the prince gazed speechlessly on this novel being, awed alike by her strange demeanor, and her sepulchral eye. Nor were the words she chaunted without effect on her hearer. It was a superstitious age, and though few men of his day were less influenced by the supernatural than Henry, there was something in the sybil’s look which chilled his heart with a strange feeling, half fear, half awe. He had not recovered from his surprise, when a horseman rushed wildly up to the hut, and the prince had scarcely recognized one of his warmest friends, Beaumont, when that gentleman breathlessly exclaimed: “The king is slain!—Tyrell’s arrow glanced from a bow and struck your royal brother to his heart!” The words of Beaumont acted on the prince like the charm which dissipates a spell. He started, as if aroused from some strange dream, looked a moment in wild surprise at his companion, and gradually comprehending the strange and sudden transition in his fortunes, he sprung with a bound into his saddle, and plunging his rowels up to the heel in his horse’s side, exclaimed: “Then this is no place for me—follow to Winchester, Beaumont,—and now for a crown and Maud!” The next instant his horse’s hoofs were thundering across the stones, as he galloped furiously to the capital. History relates how he reached Winchester, with his steed bathed in foam, and, without slackening his pace, dashed up to the door of the royal treasury, a few minutes in advance of Breteuil. History also tells how the energy of the young prince broke through the meshes of the wily traitor, and secured for Beauclerk the crown; but it does not add that, after the unwilling treasurer had surrendered the keys of the regalia, his new master said, half laughingly and half ironically, to the haughty peer who had so often neglected him when only a prince— “Ah, my lord! did I not say I would win the race? I trow your steed is mine!” The discomfited Breteuil bit his lip and was silent, but that night his best charger was sent to the royal stables; while the rest of the hunters, who were now fast pouring in from the chase, with the populace which at the first news of the Red King’s death had begun to shout “King Henry,” gathered around their young monarch and filled the air with their acclamations. “Maud is right,” said the king to himself, as he beheld the enthusiasm displayed by his people, “to say nothing of the old sybil. Ah! what will my sweet one think when she hears this?”