He was a God fearing and a God serving man. He had long made his peace with heaven. Nothing stood between him and death—nothing rose pleadingly between him and those who were to destroy him but the sweet face of Lily De Vere, whom he loved. She had knelt at Cromwell’s feet and pleaded for his life. She wearied heaven with her prayers, but all without avail. Slowly now the great sun went down. Slowly the last rim was hid beneath the greenwood. Thirty seconds more and his soul would be with God. The color did not forsake his cheeks. The dark rings of hair lay upon a warm brow. It was his purpose to die as martyrs and brave men die. What was life that he should cling to it? He almost felt the air pulsate with the first heavy roll of the death knell. But no sound came. Still facing the soldiers with his clear gray eyes upon them he waited. The crimson banners in the west were paling to pink. The kine had ceased their lowing, and had been gathered into the rick yards. All nature had sounded her curfew, but old Jasper was silent! The bell-ringer, with his gray head yet bared, had traversed half the distance between his cottage and the ivy-covered tower when a form went flitting past him, with pale, shadowy robes floating round it, and hair that the low western lights touched and tinted as with a halo. “Ah, Huldah, Huldah!” the old man muttered; “how swift she flies? I will come soon dear. My work is almost done.” Huldah was the good wife who had gone from him in her early womanhood, and for whom he had mourned all his long life. But the fleeting form was not Huldah’s. It was Lily De Vere, hurried by a sudden and desperate purpose toward the cathedral. “So help me God, curfew shall not ring to-night! Cromwell and his dragoons come this way. Once more I will kneel at his feet and plead.” She entered the ruined arch. She wrenched from its fastening the carved and worm-eaten door that barred the way to the tower. She ascended with flying and frenzied feet the steps; her heart lifted up to God for Richard’s deliverance from peril. The bats flew out and shook the dust of centuries from the black carving. As she went up she caught glimpses of the interior of the great building, with its groined roof, its chevrons and clustered columns; its pictured saint and carved image of the virgin, which the pillages of ages had been spared to be dealt with by time, the most relentless vandal of all. Up—still—up—beyond the rainbow tints thrown by the stained glass across her death-white brow; up—still—up—past open arch, with griffin and gargoyles staring at her from under bracket and cornice, with all the hideousness and mediæval carving; the stairs, flight by flight, growing frailer beneath her young feet; now but a slender network between her and the outer world; but still up.