smile.

"Frid!" came again; in a tone which showed that tears were not very far from Dorathie's blue eyes.

Frid's hand was held out in reply, and little Dorathie, understanding the gesture, sidled along the window-seat until she reached her sister in the opposite corner. There, nestled up close to Frideswide, and held fast by her arm, Dorathie put the melancholy question which was troubling her repose.

"Frid, be you going hence?—verily going?"

The answering nod was a decided affirmative.

"But both of you?—both thee and Agnes?"

Another silent, uncompromising nod from Frideswide.

"O Frid, I shall be all alone! Whatever must I do?"

And the tears came running from the blue eyes.

"Serve my Lady my grandmother," Frideswide whispered back.

"But that is—only—being useful," sobbed Dorathie, "and I—want to—be happy."

"Being useful is being happy," said her sister.

"I would being happy were being useful," was Dorathie's lugubrious answer. "They never go together—not with me."

"So do they alway with me," replied Frideswide.

"Oh, thou! Thou art a woman grown," said Dorathie with a pout.

"Right an old woman," said Frideswide with a sparkle of fun in her eyes, for she was not quite twenty. Dorathie was only eight, and in her estimation Frideswide had attained a venerable age. "But list, Doll! My Lady calleth thee."

Dorathie's sobs had attracted the notice of one of the four grown-up persons assembled round the fire. They were two ladies and two gentlemen, and the relations which they bore to Dorathie were father, mother, grandmother, and grand-uncle.

It was her grandmother who had called her—the handsome stately old lady who sat in a carved oak chair on the further side of the fire. Her hair was silvery white, but her eyes, though sunken, were lively, flashing dark eyes still.

Dorathie slipped down from the window-seat, crossed the large room, and stood before her grandmother with clasped hands and a deferential bob. She was not much afraid of a scolding, for she rarely had one from that quarter: still, in the days when girls were expected to be silent statues in the august presence of their elders, she might reasonably have feared for the result of her whispered colloquy with Frideswide.

"What ails my little Doll?" gently asked the old lady.

"An't please your good Ladyship, you said Frid and Annis[#] should both go away hence."

[#] Annis, or more correctly Anneyse, is the old French form of Agnes, and appears to have been used in the Middle Ages, in England, as an affectionate diminutive. Some have supposed Annis to be a variety of Anne, and have therefore concluded that Anne and Agnes were considered the same name. This, I think, is a mistake. Annas is the Scottish spelling.

"We did, my little maid. Is our Doll very sorry therefor?"

"I shall be all alone!" sobbed Dorathie.

"'All alone!'" repeated her grandmother with a smile, which was pitying and a little sympathetic. "Little Doll, there be fourteen in this house beside Frideswide and Agnes."

"But they are none of them them!" said Dorathie.

"Aye. There is the rub," answered her grandmother. "But, little maid, we all have to come to that some time."

"'Tis as well to begin early, Doll," said her uncle.

"Please it you, Uncle Maurice," replied Dorathie, rubbing the tears out of her eyes with her small hands, "I'd rather begin late!"

Her father laughed. "Folks must needs go forth into the world, Doll," said he. "Thou mayest have to do the like thine own self some day."

"Shall I so?" asked Dorathie, opening her eyes wide. "Then, an' it like your good Lordship, may I go where Frid and Annis shall be?"

"Thou wilt very like go with Frid or Annis, it we can compass it," replied her father; "but they will not be together, Doll."

"Not together!" cried Dorathie in a tone of disappointed surprise.

"Nay: Frideswide goeth to my good Lady of Warwick at Middleham; and Agnes to London town, to serve my Lady's Grace of Exeter in her chamber."

"Then they'll be as unhappy as me!" said Dorathie, with a very sorrowful shake of her head. "I thought they were going to be happy."

"They shall be merry as crickets!" answered her father. "My Lady of Warwick hath two young ladies her daughters, and keepeth four maidens in her bower; and my Lady's Grace of Exeter hath likewise a daughter, and keepeth other four maids to wait of her. They are little like to be lonely."

Her grandmother understood the child's feeling, but her father did not. And Dorathie was dimly conscious that it was so. She dropped another courtesy, and crept back to Frideswide in the window-seat,—not comforted at all. There they sat and listened to the conversation of their elders round the fire. Frideswide was sewing busily, but Dorathie's hands were idle.

The season was early autumn, and the trees outside were just beginning to show the yellow leaf here and there. The window in which the two girls sat, a wide oriel, opened on a narrow courtyard, in front of which lay a garden of tolerable size, wherein pinks, late roses, and other flowers were bowing their heads to the cool breeze of the Yorkshire wolds. The court-yard was paved with large round stones, not pleasant to walk on, and causing no small clatter from the hoofs of the horses. A low parapet wall divided it from the garden, which was approached by three steps, thus making the court into a wide terrace. Beyond the garden, a crenellated wall some twelve feet high shut out the prospect.

What it shut out beside the prospect was a great deal, of which little was known to Frideswide, and much less to Dorathie. They lived at a period of which we, sheltered in a country which has not known war for two hundred years, can barely form an adequate idea. For fourteen years—namely, since Frideswide was five years old, and longer than Dorathie's life—England had been torn asunder by civil warfare. Nor was it over yet. The turbulent past had been sad enough, but the worst was yet to come.

Never, since the cessation of the Heptarchy, had a more terrible time been seen than the Wars of the Roses. In this struggle above all others, family convictions were divided, and family love rent asunder. Father and son, brother and brother, uncle and nephew, constantly took opposite sides: and every warrior on each side was absolutely sure that all shadow of right lay with his candidate, and that the "rebel and adversary" of his chosen monarch had not an inch of ground to stand on.

Nor was the question of right so clear and indisputable as in this nineteenth century we are apt to think. To our eyes, regarding the matter in the light of modern law, it appears certain that Edward IV. was