From Edgeware, where the Watling Street left the Middlesex Forest to cross the barren heath known as Tyburn Lane, the great road was crowded with travellers. A small portion of them—messengers, soldiers, and hunting parties—were riding northward, but the great mass was facing the City whither they were pressing to warm themselves in the glow of the Coronation. On foot, on horseback, in wagons and on crutches, they were as motley a throng as had ever trod the Roman stones; and the respectable element among them was by no means large enough to leaven the lump. Sometimes a group of merchants was to be seen, conducting loaded wagons; sometimes, a thane’s pompous thane, ensheathed in his retinue; while occasionally, as they neared the New Gate, the crowd was swelled by squads of the lesser Cheapside dealers making the daily pilgrimage from their country dwellings to their stalls in the City. But these were as scattered islands in the stream of half drunken seamen, masterless thralls, wolf-eyed beggars, paupers, vagabonds and criminals, who were pushing toward London in hopes of pleasure or gain or for want of another goal. Amid such a rabble, and as out of place as a swarm of butterflies in frost-silvered air, a band of high-born women was to be seen approaching the City this early December morning. Gorgeously attired pages, hardly more warlike than the women, made a blooming hedge around them, while a sufficiently strong guard of men-at-arms protected them from actual harm, but from impudent comment and ribald jest there was no defence. Their hoods were pulled down as before a storm, their mantles drawn up above their chins; and all but two of them appeared to be trying to shrink into their gilded saddles. The two who rode at their head, however, looked to be of a different mettle. Indeed, in the quality of her courage, each appeared to differ from the other, though muffling folds blotted out anything like individuality. The shorter of the two, while she rode with gracefully drooping head, had left her face practically uncovered, seemingly unconscious of the half slighting, half pitying admiration elicited by its pathetic beauty. The other, who showed no more than the tip of her nose, held her head bravely erect, while, even through her wrappings, the straightness of her back breathed haughtiness. Yet it was not to the pensive fair one that a timid companion appealed for comfort, when a temporary damming of the stream pressed those who led, back upon those who followed. She stretched out an en-treating hand toward the girl with the haughtily carried head. “Randalin! What will he do—the King—when he finds that we have fooled Ulf Jarl, and come hither against his command?” The Danish girl laughed recklessly. “Little do I care, Candida, to tell it truthfully. Nothing can be worse than sitting in that Abbey. Here at least there is a chance that something may happen to help us to forget that we are alive.”