’Nay, there was too much cause for his words.  Never shall I forget the day when Scrope was put to death on this very moor on which we are entering.  There sat my father on his horse, with us four boys around him, when the old man passed in front of us, and looked at him with a face pitiful and terrible.  “Harry of Bolingbroke,” he said, “because thou hast done these things, therefore shall thy foes be of thine own household; the sword shall never depart therefrom, but all the increase of thy house shall die in the flower of their age, and in the fourth generation shall their name be clean cut off.”  The commons will have it that at that moment my father was struck with leprosy; and struck to the heart assuredly he was, nor was he ever the same man again.  I always believed that those words made him harder upon every prank of poor Hal’s, till any son save Hal would have become his foe!  And see now, the old bedesman may be in the right; poor pretty Blanche has long been in her grave, Thomas is with her now, and Jamie,’—­he lowered his voice,—­’when men say that Harry hath more of Alexander in him than there is in other men, it strikes to my heart to think of the ring lying on the empty throne.’

‘Now,’ said James, ’what strikes me is, what doleful bodings can come into a brave man’s head on a chill morning before he has broken his fast.  A tankard of hot ale will chase away omens, whether of bishop or bedesman.’

‘It may chase them from the mind, but will not make away with them,’ said John.  ’But I might have known better than to speak to you of such things—­you who are well-nigh a Lollard in disbelief of all beyond nature.’

‘No Lollard am I,’ said James.  ’What Holy Church tells me, I believe devoutly; but not in that which she bids me loathe as either craft of devils or of men.’

‘Ay, of which?  There lies the question,’ said John.

‘Of men,’ said the Scottish king; ’of men who have wit enough to lay hold of the weaker side even of a sober youth such as Lord John of Lancaster!  Your proneness to believe in sayings and prophecies, in sorceries and magic, is the weakest point of all of you.’

’And it is the weakest point in you, James, that you will not credit upon proof, such proof as was the fulfilment of the prophecy of the place of my father’s death.’

’One such saying as that, fulfilled to the ear, though not in truth, is made the plea for all this heart-sinking—­ay, and what is worse, for the durance of your father’s widow as a witch, and of her brave young son, because forsooth his name is Arthur of Richemont, and some old Welsh rhymester hath whispered to Harry that Richmond shall come out of Brittany, and be king of England.’

‘Arthur is no worse off than any other captive of Agincourt,’ said Bedford; ’and I tell you, James, the day may come when you will rue your want of heed to timely warnings.’

’Better rue once than pine under them all my life, and far better than let them betray me into deeming some grewsome crime an act of justice, as you may yet let them do,’ said James.