Then, while the boy nestled close to his mother, as if to give her strength by putting his arms round her, Lucy obeyed her instructions, and opening it, read the Earl of Leicester's private letter, which had accompanied the official despatch, giving an account of the investment of Zutphen and the battle which had been fought before its walls. This private letter was enclosed for Lady Pembroke in that to his Right Honourable and trusted friend Sir F. Walsingham. * * * * * 'In the mist of the morning of the 23d, my incomparably brave nephew and your brother, Philip Sidney, with but five hundred foot and seven hundred horsemen, advanced to the very walls of Zutphen. 'It was hard fighting against a thousand of the enemy. Philip's horse was killed under him, and alas! he heightened the danger by his fearless courage; for he had thrown off his cuisses to be no better equipped than Sir William Pelham, who had no time to put on his own, and, springing on a fresh horse, he went hotly to the second charge. Again there was a third onset, and our incomparable Philip was shot in the left leg. 'They brought him near me, faint from loss of blood, and he called for water. They brought him a bottle full, and he was about to raise it to his parched lips, when he espied a poor dying soldier cast greedy, ghastly eyes thereon. He forbore to drink of the water, and, handing the bottle to the poor wretch, said,-- '"Take it--thy need is greater than mine."' * * * * * 'Oh! Philip! Philip!' Lady Pembroke said, 'in death, as in life, self-forgetting and Christ-like in your deeds.' Lucy raised her eyes from the letter and they met those of her mistress with perfect sympathy which had no need of words. 'Doth my uncle say more, Lucy? Read on.' * * * * * 'And,' Lucy continued, in the same low voice, which had in it a ring of mingled pride in her ideal hero and sorrow for his pain, 'my nephew would not take on himself any glory or honour when Sir William Russel, also sorely wounded, exclaimed,-- '"Oh, noble Sir Philip, never did man attain hurt so honourably or so valiantly as you," weeping over him as if he had been his mistress. '"I have done no more," he said, "than God and England claimed of me. My life could not be better spent than in this day's service." I ordered my barge to be prepared, and, the surgeons doing all they could to stanch the blood, Philip was conveyed to Arnhem. He rests now in the house of one Madam Gruithuissens, and all that love and care can do, dear niece, shall be done by his and your sorrowing uncle, LEICESTER. 'Pardon this penmanship. It is writ in haste, and not without tears, for verily, I seem now to know, as never before, what the world and his kindred possess in Philip Sidney. R. L.