and shone golden in the mellow light of the wax tapers guttering in silver sconces above his plume.

"Knowest thou not, Sir Richard," said Henry, bending above the roses and inhaling their refreshing fragrance, "who sped to us these graceful messengers?"

"I beseech thee, your grace," warned Oxford, "to observe some measure of caution when breathing in their odors. 'Tis not impossible that a deadly poison is lurking within their fair petals. It sits plain upon my memory how poor Burgondy expired after the smelling of a nosegay."

"For the matter of that," spoke up the fair young knight, "had they been laden with a secret poison I had not lived to bear them within my lord's pavilion; for I sniffed of them a score of times whilst riding hither."

"Then, certes, we are double safe," laughed Henry, "for their sweet perfume, Sir Richard, hath filtered to our nostrils through thy good body. But what like, say you, was the messenger by whom they were bestowed?"

"It ill beseems me to say that I know not," the young knight replied, "but such is the truth, my lord. I had but finished relieving the guard at the further side of the wood when I heard a sound as of galloping hoofs along the road from Market Bosworth way. Approaching, the rider halted his steed where no ray of light from our blazing links could reach to raise the veil of his identity. Then, calling my name, he laid the flowers within my arms. 'For Henry, our noble liege,' he quickly whispered, and rattled off down the highroad ere I could return word of thanks."

"Saw you no cognizance upon his sleeve or upon the trappings of his horse?" queried Blunt.

"Methought there was a rayed sun emblazoned on his arm," the young knight answered. "Though, in truth, my lord, 'twas all done so quickly I may not swear 'twas surely so."

"A Yorkist gift, by the rood! Marry, and this be true, my friends, it is a good omen indeed," observed the Earl of Oxford, rising and going to the table. For quite a space he leaned above it, gazing fixedly upon the flowers, as though in the hope that they themselves might unravel the mystery their presence had aroused. "But this," he added presently, indicating the solitary white bloom, "doth sore defeat my understanding. Wherefore, prithee, mingle the white with the red?"

"Methinks I have the solution of that enigma," spoke up Herbert, whose form was merged in shadow, and who, until then, had taken no part in the discourse. "I would crave his lordship's indulgence, however, before adventuring my lame conjecture."

"Surely we would have thy answer to the riddle, Sir Walter," said Henry, yawning sleepily. "My mind doth refuse to probe its baffling depths."

"An I mistake me not," Herbert resumed, "my lord of Oxford in the very profession of his perplexity hath reached a good half way to the answer. Methinks 'tis meant to typify the peaceful mingling of the white rose with the red."

"Why​—​body o' God, I see it now!" Henry exclaimed. "But first, by force of arms, the red must overwhelm the white."

"Nay​—​not so, and your lordship, please," interjected Blunt. "But rather, let us hope, a mingling through the milder expedient of marriage."

"Ah! Princess Elizabeth!" cried Henry, assuming a sitting posture upon the edge of his couch. "Sir Walter, thou hast given us a fair answer and earned a guerdon for thy keen wit. But enough of soft speech, my noble knights. And now, sirs, to the sterner business of the day! My Lord of Oxford, where say'st thou camp Stanley's forces?"

"At a point equally distant from thine, most gracious liege, and those of the infamous Richard. He desires thee to understand that his beloved son's head hangs upon his dissembling devotion for yet a few hours to the murderous hunchback's cause."

"Aye​—​I know. We may depend upon him and his three thousand horse, think you?"

"With absolute certainty, my lord."

"'Tis well," observed Henry, laying aside his feathered cap and stooping to allow his young squire to adjust a steel helmet to his shoulder-guards. "Then do thou, my lord of Oxford," he resumed, "have thy archers well in hand and ready against the first show of dawn. The sun, standing in our enemy's eyes, should much confuse their aim. Bend thy every energy toward staying their advance with a cloud of well directed bolts. My good Captain Blunt, let our basilisks in the wood fling their leaden hail above the heads of our kneeling archers. Sir Walter Herbert, let thy mounted troop to the right and left be ready for the final charge. And you, Sir Richard, faithful friend, bear upon my right hand till the battle's done. Do thou each, noble gentlemen, take one of these roses and entwine it with thy helmet's crest. What, ho, guards! strip me this tent and bestow it with the camp litter behind the wood. Now, thy brave hands, noble sirs; and God smile upon our cause."

Into the dense vapors arising from the morass, which, in the gray light of daybreak, were rapidly changing to a pearly mist, the leaders then dispersed upon their several missions.

The droning of subdued conversation, the clanking of swords and steel gear, the twanging of bow-strings undergoing preliminary trial, and the tinkling of pewter flagons discharging their liquid cheer into parched throats could be heard over all the field. Each armed host was alert and ready, awaiting with tense drawn nerves the flaming signal in the eastern sky.

From afar off a cock crowed a cheery welcome to approaching day.

"I would the blessed light would discover me an eye-hole across the brook," one of the burly archers was saying. "I'd flick me a bolt into its yawning center for God and a better king."

"Yea​—​truly. And any king, my friend, would be a better king," another answered. "I would I could but fasten my aim upon the elfish-marked monster himself. 'Twould be a mark worth finding, i' faith."

"My lord of Oxford is a brave and clever captain, lad. Were it not for these leather guards our bow-strings would have been no whit more useful than frayed rope's ends with this cursed damp. As 'tis, they're fit to send a quiverful of white-hot billets into as many traitorous gizzards. I, too, would that one of them might make its home within the green midric of Richard himself."

"Hast heard the latest from the hunchback's camp?" another whispered.

"Nay. What is 't?"

"'Tis said by the outposts along the slough that there were heard wild shriekings in King Richard's tent during the night."

"Ah! the foul fiends bidding him to their black abode. Mark you, Jock, once he gets there he'll have the whole dismal brood hanged, drawn, and quartered before the year's end."

"'Twould be his first gracious deed then, I give thee warrant."

From an opposite point of the compass a second cock crowed; and then another and another. The day at last was dawning; the mist lifting, dispersing. Slowly it thinned away, as though one after another of a myriad of gauzy curtains was being raised from between the opposing armies.

When eyes could penetrate from line to line hostilities began. A pallid, ghost-like form, grotesquely exaggerated, would emerge from the fog. Then would be heard a sharp cry, a groan, a horrible rattling in an expiring throat, a flinging aloft of a pair of arms, and a sinking of the spectral figure into the black mire above which it seemed to have been floating.

These emerging shadows multiplied from one into a score; from a score into a hundred; from a hundred into a thousand. There was no crash of sudden onset and meeting. Rather there was that which resembled a gentle crescendo of death. A blending