Paul passed in.  There beside the altar he saw the queen, bowed down by the magnitude of her woe, for she had just heard the first rumour of that terrible tragedy.

As he approached someone spoke to her, and she turned, rose, and came swiftly forward.

“Paul,” she said, “Paul—­tell me—­is it true?”

Paul looked at her with dim eyes.

“I have brought you his wife,” he said.  “It was his last charge.  Now I am going back.  They have killed him; let them kill me, too.”

He placed his helpless burden in the queen’s arms, turned, and made a few uncertain steps, and then fell down helplessly.  He had fulfilled his life’s purpose in living for the prince; but it was not given to him to die uselessly for him, too.

Chapter 10:  The Prince Avenged.

Paul Stukely lived to see the foul crime that stained the victor’s laurels on the field of Tewkesbury amply avenged upon the House of York in the days that quickly followed.

He himself was carried away by his faithful men-at-arms, who saw that their cause was finally lost; and when, many weeks later, the raging fever which held him in its grasp abated, and he knew once more the faces of those about him, and could ask what had befallen him, he found that he had been carried away to his own small manor, bestowed upon him by the great Earl of Warwick—­which manor, perhaps from its very obscurity and his own, was left quietly in his hands; for its late owner had fallen upon the field of Tewkesbury, and no claim was ever made which disturbed Paul from peaceful possession.

When he recovered his senses it was to hear that not only the prince was dead, but his royal father also; that the queen, as Margaret was still called by him, had returned to France; and that the cause of the Red Rose was hopelessly extinguished.  So Paul, with the hopefulness which is the prerogative of youth, recovered by degrees from the depression of spirit that the memory of the tragedy of Tewkesbury cast over him, and learned by degrees to take a healthy interest in his little domain, which he ruled wisely and kindly, without meddling in public matters, or taking part in the burning questions of the day.  To him Edward always was and always must be a cruel tyrant and usurper; but as none but princes of the House of York were left to claim the succession to the crown, there could be no possible object in any renewal of strife.

Paul, in his quiet west-country home, watched the progress of events, and saw in the tragedies which successively befell the scions of the House of York the vengeance of Heaven for the foul murder of the young Lancastrian prince.