closer about her, and, leaning back in her seat in the stern beside me, raised her face to the wild and solemn heavens. Diccon sat apart in the bow and held his tongue. The minister bent over, and, lifting the man that lay in the bottom of the boat, laid him at full length upon the thwart before us. The moonlight streamed down upon the prostrate figure. I think it could never have shone upon a more handsome or a more wicked man. He lay there in his splendid dress and dark beauty, Endymion-like, beneath the moon. The King’s ward turned her eyes upon him, kept them there a moment, then glanced away, and looked at him no more.

“There’s a parlous lump upon his forehead where it struck the thwart,” said the minister, “but the life’s yet in him. He’ll shame honest men for many a day to