Baby Number One was baptized in the chapel of the Castle, borne in his velvet wrapper by a lady of title, with the accompaniment of sweet music and joyous bells. His sponsors were a bishop, an abbot, and a prioress. He received the family name of Roger; for a hundred and fifty years back, the heirs of that family had been Rogers and Edmunds alternately, and it was the turn for the former. Roger Mortimer—an ominous name! For this boy was the heir of the earldom of March, one of the proudest coronets of England; and his mother, a fair girl of eighteen, was a Princess of the Blood. Baby Number Two was christened in the parish church, one of a batch of ten, and might not have been christened at all if the curate had not been one who looked sharply after his baptismal fees. He received the name of Lawrence, which was the first that occurred to his parents. Very naturally protesting in his baby style against a sprinkling with cold water, he was tumbled with no particular care into the thin arms of Mariot, who rewarded him with a private shake for his vocal performance, the only music which accompanied the ceremony. As to surname, he could not be said to have any. What did the son of a serf want with a surname? As he grew older, however, some distinction between him and other Lawrences being felt desirable, his neighbours took to calling him Lawrence Madison, or son of Maud,—his mother being a woman with a tongue, and as such a more prominent character than her quiet and silent husband. The family physician, Master Gilbert Besseford, carefully drew out the horoscope of the young Lord. It appeared from this elaborate document that he was to be a highly accomplished and intellectual youth, since Mercury was busy about him; that he would be most fortunate in wedlock, for Venus was doing something; that he would rise to the highest honours of the State, and might possibly achieve a crown, as Jupiter was most benevolently disposed to him. At any rate, something was to happen about his twenty-fifth birthday, which would place him in a position that none of his fathers had equalled. He would have a long life and a happy one. Two items of the horoscope were true. He was to be indeed an intellectual and accomplished youth: and in his twenty-fifth year a crown was to be his, to which few of his fathers had attained. But those around him thought of a corruptible crown, and that which God had prepared for him was an incorruptible. And the happy wedlock, and the long life, and the rise to worldly honour, were not the portion of Roger Mortimer, but of Lawrence Madison in the hovel below.