Hours passed:  he wrote, he ordered, he signed, he sealed; he mentioned name after name, of place and officer, never moving or looking up.  And James, who knew from Salisbury that he had neither slept nor eaten since sixty miles off he had met a worse report of his brother, watched him anxiously till, when evening began to fall, he murmured, ’There is the captain of—­of—­at—­but—­’—­the pen slipped from his fingers, and he said, ‘I can no more!’

The overtaxed powers, strained so long—­mind, memory, and all—­were giving way under the mere force of excessive fatigue.  He rose from his seat, but stumbled, like one blind, as James upheld him, and led him away to the nearest bed-chamber, where, almost while the attendants divested him of the heavy boots and cuirass he had never paused all these hours to remove, he dropped into a sleep of sheer exhaustion.

James, who was likewise wearied out with watching, turned towards his own quarters; but, in so doing, he could not but turn aside to the chapel, where before the altar had been laid all that was left of King Henry.  There he lay, his hands clasped over a crucifix, clad in the same rich green and crimson robes in which he had ridden to meet his Queen at Vincennes but three short months before; the golden circlet from his helmet was on his head, but it could not give additional majesty to the still and severe sweetness of his grand and pure countenance, so youthful in the lofty power that high aspirations had imprinted on it, yet so intensely calm in its marble rest, more than ever with the look of the avenging unpitying angel.  To James, it was chiefly the face of the man whom he had best loved and admired, in spite of their strange connection; but to Malcolm, who had as usual followed him closely, it was verily a look from the invisible world—­a look of awful warning and reproof, almost as if the pale set lips were unclosing to demand of him where he was in the valley of shadows, through which the way lay to Jerusalem.  If Henry had turned back, and warned him at the gate of the heavenly Sion, surely such would have been his countenance; and Malcolm, when, like James, he had sprinkled the holy water on the white brow, and crossed himself while the low chant of Psalms from kneeling priests went up around him—­clasped his two hands close together, and breathed forth the words, ’Oh, I have wandered far!  O great King, I will never leave the straight way again!  I will cast aside all worldly aims!  O God, and the Saints, help me not to lose my way again!’

He would have tarried on still, in the fascination of that wonderful unearthly countenance, and in the inertness of faculties stunned by fatigue and excitement, but James summoned him by a touch, and he again followed him.

‘O Sir!’ he began, when they had turned away, ’I repent me of my falling away to the world!  I give all up.  Let me back to my vows of old.’

‘We will talk of that another time,’ said James, gravely.  ’Neither you nor I, Malcolm, can think reasonably under such a blow as this; and I forbid you rashly to bind yourself.’