the coffin stood six gigantic soldiers of the guard, rigid as statues, with bowed heads and arms reversed.  Only their eyes moved, and I dare say that I stared at them in something like terror.  Certainly a religious awe held me as the pressure of the sightseers carried me forth from the doors again and into the street, where I wedged myself into the crowd, and waited for the procession.  By this time a fog had rolled up from the river, and the foot-guards who lined the road had begun to light their torches.  Behind them were drawn up the horse-guards, their officers erect in saddle, with naked sabres and heavy scarves of crape.  There amid the sounds of minute guns, and of bells tolling I must have waited a full hour before the procession came by—­the fifes, the muffled drums, the yeomen of the guard staggering with the great coffin, the pall-bearers and peers walking two and two, with pages bearing their heavy trains.  All this I watched as it went by, and with a mind so shaken that a hand from behind had plucked twice or thrice at my elbow before I was aware that any one claimed my attention.  Then, turning with a moisture in my eyes—­for the organ had begun to sound within the abbey—­I found myself staring past the torch of a foot-guard and into the face of my nephew, risen from the dead!  He was haggard, unkempt in his hair and dress, and (I think) had been fasting for a long while without being aware of his hunger.  He drew me back and away from the crowd; but when I had embraced him, it seemed that to all my eager questions he had nothing to answer.

“I was starting for Cornwall, to-morrow,” he said.  “Shall we travel together?” And then, as though painfully recollecting, he passed a hand over his forehead and added, “I have walked half-way across Europe.  I am a good walker by this time.”

“We will hire horses, to be sure,” said I, finding nothing better to say.

The age, the lines in his young face cut me to the heart, and I longed to ask concerning the Princess, but dared not.

“Horses?  Ah, yes, to be sure, I come back to riches.  Nay, my dear uncle, you are going to tell me that the estates are mortgaged deep as ever—­I know.  But allow me to tell you there is all the world’s difference between poverty that is behindhand with its interest, and poverty that has to trust God for its next meal.”

At the eating-house to which I carried him he held out his scarred palms to me across the table.

“They have worked my way for me from the Alps,” said he.  “I left my crown there, and”—­he laughed wearily—­“I come back to find another monarch in the act of laying aside a greater one.  My God!  The vanity of it!”

He drank off a glass of wine.  “Find me a bed, Uncle Gervase,” said he.  “I feel that I can sleep the clock round.”