But the long lay of victory was over; and King Henry had roused himself to thank the singers, then sighed, and said, ‘How long ago that was!’

‘Six years,’ said James.

’The whole space from the hope and pride of youth to the care and toil of eld,’ said Henry.  ’Your Scots made an old man of me the day they slew Thomas.’

‘Yet that has been your sole mishap,’ said James.

’Yea, truly!  But thenceforth I have learnt that the road to Jerusalem is not so straight and plain as I deemed it when I stood victorious at Agincourt.  The Church one again—­the Holy Sepulchre redeemed!  It seemed then before my eyes, and that I was the man called to do it.’

‘So it may be yet,’ said James.  ’Sickness alters everything, and raises mountains before us.’

‘It may be so,’ said Henry; ’and yet—­Jerusalem!  Jerusalem!  It was my father’s cry; it was King Edward’s cry; it was St. Louis’ cry; and yet they never got there.’

‘St. Louis was far on his way,’ said James.

‘Ay! he never turned aside!’ said Henry, sighing, and moving restlessly and wearily with something of returning fever.

   “’O bona patria, lumina sobria te speculantur—­”

Boy, are you there?’ as, in turning, his eye fell on Malcolm.  ’Take warning:  the straight road is the best.  You see, I have never come to Jerusalem.’  Then again he murmured: 

   “’Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur;
   Non breve vivere, non breve plangere, retribuetur.”

And James, seeing that nothing lulled him like song, offered to sing that mysteriously beautiful rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix.

‘Ay, prithee do so,’ said Henry.  ’There’s a rest there, when the Agincourt lay rings hollow.  Well, there is a Jerusalem where our shortcomings are made up; only the straight way—­the straight way.’

Malcolm took his part with James in singing the rhythm, which he had learnt long ago at Coldingham, and which thus in every note brought back the vanished aspirations and self-dedication to ‘the straight way.’

For such, an original purpose of self-devotion must ever be—­not of course exclusively to the monastic life; but whoever lowers his aims of serving God under any worldly inducement, is deviating from the straight way:  and, thought Malcolm, if King Harry feels Agincourt an empty word beside the song of Sion, must not all I have sought for be a very vanity?

Sometimes dozing, but sometimes restless, and with the pain of breathing constantly increasing on him, Henry wore through the greater part of the day, upon the river, until it was necessary to land, and be taken through the forest in his litter.  He was now obliged to be lifted from the barge; and his weariness rendered the conveyance very distressing, save that his patient smile never faded; and still he said, ’All will be well when I come to my Kate!’

Alas! when the gates were reached, James hardly knew how to tell him that the Queen had gone that morning to Paris with her mother.  Yet still he was cheerful.  ‘If the physicians deal hard with me,’ he said, ’it will be well that she should not be here till the worst is over.’