Helena’s own grief was too new, however, to endure listening to further details; she stole from the room, and ran for comfort and quiet to the stables, where in Harkaway’s stall she could cry unmolested, finding some comfort in leaning her aching head on the neck of the horse which Gabriel had ridden when he had gallantly tried to rescue her father. It seemed to her that all the great and good were dying; her own father, Hampden the patriot, Lord Brooke and a host of others within the last few months--and now the noble-hearted Falkland, with whom only the day before she had received the sacrament. Who in that generation would rise to fill the terrible gaps which this great struggle betwixt opposing principles had caused? CHAPTER XXIII. I cannot mount to Heaven beneath this ban, Can Christian hope survive so far below The level of the happiness of man? Can angels’ wings in these dark waters grow? A spirit voice replied, “From bearing right Our sorest burthens comes fresh strength to bear! And so we rise again towards the light, And quit the sunless depths for upper air! Meek patience is as diver’s breath to all Who sink in sorrow’s sea, and many a ray Comes gleaming downward from the Source of day, To guide us reascending from our fall: The rocks have bruised thee sore, but angels’ wings Grow fast from bruises, hope from anguish springs.” --A. Tennyson Turner. With incredible slowness the summer months passed by in the stifling atmosphere of the Saxon tower of Oxford Castle. Many times Gabriel cheered himself by a resolute dwelling on the old motto written in Elizabethan handwriting in the great family Bible at Hereford which had belonged to his grandfather, “Hope helpeth heavie hartes, sayeth Henry Harford.” He remembered that the same motto appeared in neat printing characters when the Bible had been handed down to his father, and had become “Bridstock Harford, his Book.” Apparently the Harfords had always had troubled times, but had known how to win their way through them, and he tried desperately not to disgrace the family traditions of fortitude and constancy.