'If only he knows my arms are round him,' she thought; 'if only I can hear his voice call me _mother_, I will die with him content.' After a few hours, when there were lines of dawn in the eastern sky, Mary felt the barge was being moored to the river bank; and her guide, rising from his seat, came towards her, gave her his hand and said,-- 'We have now to go on foot for some distance, to the place where your son lies. Are you able for this?' For Mary was stiff and cramped with her position in the barge for so long a time, and she would have fallen as she stepped out, had not one of the watermen caught her, saying,-- 'Steady, Madam! steady!' After a few tottering steps, Mary recovered herself, and said,-- 'The motion of walking will be good for me; let us go forward.' It was a long and weary tramp through spongy, low-lying land, and the way seemed interminable. At last, just as the sun was sending shafts of light across river and swamp--making them glow like burnished silver, and covering every tall spike of rush and flag with diamonds--a few straggling cottages or huts came in sight. A clump of pollards hid the cluster of buildings which formed the nucleus of the little hamlet, till they were actually before a low, irregular block of cottages, and at the door of one of these Mary's guide stopped. 'A few of our brethren took refuge here after the taking of Axel and the burning of our habitation there. We are under the protection of the Duke of Parma, who is advancing with an army for the relief of Zutphen, and will, as we believe, drive from before us the foes of the Holy Church.' As they passed under the low doorway into a narrow entry paved with clay, Mary's guide said,-- 'Tarry here, while I find what has passed in my absence.' Mary was not left long in suspense. The man presently returned, and, beckoning her, said,-- 'Come, without delay!' Mary found herself in a low, miserably furnished room on the ground-floor, where, in the now clear light of the bright summer morning, Ambrose Gifford lay dying. The 'large, cruel, black eyes,' as Lucy Forrester had called them long ago, were dim now, and were turned with pitiful pleading upon the wife he had so grievously injured. The priest stood by, and signed to Mary to kneel and put her face near her husband, that she might hear what he had to say. As she obeyed, the hood fell back from her head, and a ray of sunshine caught the wealth of her rich chestnut hair and made an aureole round it. The grey streaks, which sorrow rather than years, had mingled amongst the bronze locks, shone like silver. She took the long, wasted hand in hers, and, in a low, clear voice, said,-- 'I am here, Ambrose! what would you say to me?' 'The boy!' he gasped; 'fetch hither the boy!' One of the Brothers obeyed the dying man's request, and from a pallet at the farther end of the room he brought the boy, whose cheeks were aflame with fever, as he lay helpless in the Brother's arms.