but the record of the fatal arrow is enough to make the place mournful with the presence of death, and to fill the mind with solemn fancies of life's strange accidents. The royal huntsman rode forth that morning to the baying of the hound and the ringing of the horn—his gallant charger hounding over the greensward, obedient to his slightest sign, and yet less docile than the vassals who followed, watching every turn of his fierce and flashing eye. How little did he deem that a few hours would see him carried a dishonoured corpse in a common cart, with less care than would have waited on its usual load of the meadow hay or the yellow corn. And little, too, did Sir Walter Tyrrell deem that the morning, which beheld him a favourite guest in the royal train, would also see him a murderer and an exile, flying from the scaffold—which in those days would have waited for no nice distinctions of intention in the guilt. Ay, these are the lessons by which history teaches its severe morality,—mocking human power with its own nothingness—changing the face of a nation's affairs by a chance—smiting the proud in his place of pride—and staining the wild flowers with blood, human and princely blood, poured out instead of that from the menaced deer.
