“O my only friend,” said Maudelain, “I may not comprehend, but I know that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me.”  Hair by hair he scattered upon the floor that which he held. “Time is! and I have not need of any token to spur my memory.”  He prized up a corner of the hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a horse and a sword.

At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel.  Two weeks later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same morning the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider ...

Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages.  Maudelain’s successful imposture of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their physical resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are now, however, tolerably well known to students of history.

In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place of his now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment designed for Richard.  It would seem evident, from the Argument of the story in hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of this mysterious business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King Richard’s eleven year old wife.  And (should one have a taste for the deductive) the foregoing name of Orvendile, when compared with “THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD,” would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in the affair.

It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger brother.  Nicolas, if you are to believe his “EPILOGUE,” had the best of reasons for knowing that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Castle in the February of 1400, after Harry of Derby had seized the crown of England, was not Richard Plantagenet:  as is attested, also, by the remaining fragment of this same “STORY OF THE HERITAGE.”

... and eight men-at-arms followed him.

Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair aside, and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door securely.  “Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard,” said Piers Exton, “since you will not ever eat again.”

“Is it so?” the trapped man answered quietly.  “Then indeed you come in a good hour.”  Once only he smote upon his breast. “Mea culpa! O Eternal Father, do Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I have committed, both in thought and deed, for now the time is very short.”

And Exton spat upon the dusty floor.  “Foh, they had told me I would find a king here.  I discover only a cat that whines.”

“Then ’ware his claws!” As a viper leaps Maudelain sprang upon the nearest fellow and wrested away his halberd.  “Then ’ware his claws, my men!  For I come of an accursed race.  And now let some of you lament that hour wherein the devil’s son begot an heir for England!  For of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and cold