Broke out again in muffled peals across the heaving sea, And home the Victor came at last, Home, home, with England's flag half-mast, That never dipped to foe before, on Nelson's Victory. God gave this year to England; II. And what God gives He takes again; God gives us life, God gives us death: our victories have wings; Ay; in the fire we cherish Our thoughts and dreams may perish; Yet shall it burn for England's sake triumphant as of old! What sacrifice could gain for her Our own shall still maintain for her. And hold the gates of Freedom wide that take no keys of gold. God gave this year to England; III. Her eyes are far too bright for tears Of sorrow; by her silent dead she kneels, too proud for pride; Their blood, their love, have brought her right to claim the new imperial years In England's name for Freedom, in whose love her children died; In whose love, though hope may dwindle, Love and brotherhood shall kindle Between the striving nations as a choral song takes fire, Till new hope, new faith, new wonder Cleave the clouds of doubt asunder, And speed the union of mankind in one divine desire. IV. Hasten the Kingdom, England; This year across the listening world There came a sound of mingled tears where victory and defeat Clasped hands; and Peace-among the dead-stood wistfully, with white wings furled, Knowing the strife was idle; for the night and morning meet, Yet there is no disunion In heaven's divine communion As through the gates of twilight the harmonious morning pours; When the world's divinest sorrow Shall show how Love stands knocking at the world's unopened doors. Hasten the Kingdom, England; V. Look up across the narrow seas, Across the great white nations to thy dark imperial throne Where now three hundred million souls attend on thine august decrees; Ah, bow thine head in humbleness, the Kingdom is thine own: Not for the pride or power God gave thee this in dower; But, now the West and East have met and wept their mortal loss, Now that their tears have spoken And the long dumb spell is broken, Is it nothing that thy banner bears the red eternal cross? VI. Ay! Lift the flag of England; And lo, that Eastern cross is there, Veiled with a hundred meanings as our English eyes are veiled; Then with all the earth before us And the great cross floating o'er us We shall break the sword we forged of old, so weak we were and blind; While the inviolate heaven discloses England's Rose of all the roses Dawning wide and ever wider o'er the kingdom of mankind. Hasten the Kingdom, England; VII. For then all nations shall be one; One as the ordered stars are one that sing upon their way One with the rhythmic glories of the swinging sea and the rolling sun, One with the flow of life and death, the tides of night and day; One with all dreams of beauty, One with all laws of duty; One with the weak and helpless while the one sky burns above; Till eyes by tears made glorious Look up at last victorious And lips that starved break open in one song of life and love. VIII. New Year, be good to England; And when the Spring returns again Rekindle in our English hearts the universal Spring, That we may wait in faith upon the former and the latter rain, Till all waste places burgeon and the wildernesses sing; Pour the glory of thy pity Through the dark and troubled city; Pour the splendor of thy beauty over wood and meadow fair; May the God of battles guide thee And the Christ-child walk beside thee With a word of peace for England in the dawn of Nelson's Year. Blackwood's Magazine. Alfred Noyes. THE QUEEN'S MAN. A ROMANCE OF THE WARS OF THE ROSES. CHAPTER VII. Master Antonio rode in the cavalcade with a rich jewel round his neck, the gift of my Lady Marlowe. She had gained and bound him to her service with all the arts she knew; and her power was a kind of witchcraft, independent of age and of beauty. The influence was mutual, for with honest and simple natures she could do nothing, except by sheer physical terror. Thus her stepson Harry was absolutely independent of her, not even realizing the carefully hidden evil in her character. Richard was a child, often a rebellious one. Young Edward of March, a Renaissance prince, found nothing strange, but much that was attractive in the glimpses of herself she chose to show him. Very gladly would Isabel Marlowe, though old enough to be his mother, have taken the place afterwards held by Elizabeth Woodville in Edward's life. It would seem that Lancastrian widows and the heir of York had a natural affinity. It suited my Lady's plans to keep Antonio waiting upon her at Swanlea till the early days of February, sending a man of her own to let Sir William Roden know that she would shortly visit him. It seemed to her, she said, that this complicated affair must be arranged in person. In the meanwhile, she expected every day a messenger from Lord Marlowe, who was supposed to be working his way south with Queen Margaret's victorious army; but Harry was silent. Then came the news that Edward of York had won a battle at Mortimer's Cross, and that the Queen, in spite of this, was in full march on London. Lady Marlowe delayed no longer. Ruddiford, the key to its own quarter of the Midlands, became a more and more desirable outpost. If she and her party were unlucky enough to meet the Queen's force, or stragglers from it,why, there was Harry, the Queen's man, to vouch for his mother and brother. And he owed them too much explanation, too much atonement, not to acknowledge their claim to the utmost. If, on the other hand, the Yorkist army should cross her path, my Lady Marlowe would feel that the time was come to cast off all disguise. Edward should know that she was on her way, with her son in her train, to capture a strong place for him. Her Ladyship travelled in her own carriage, a long covered wagon, with panels and wheels curiously painted and gilt, the interior being luxurious with cushions and tapestries. Four strong horses dragged this structure through the miry ways. Though the jolting was frightful, Isabel preferred it to the swinging movement of a horselitter, which followed with her waitingwomen. Master Richard divided his time between lying full length in the carriage, trifling with his little dogs and his lute, and riding, gayly tricked out with jewelled arms and velvet garments, in advance of the escort and the train of pack-horses which carried the baggage. Several times the great carriage broke down in specially bad parts of the road, and the party was surrounded by groups of strange nomads, the moving population of England,-charlatans and cheap-jacks, minstrels and jugglers, men and women who danced on their hands to the music of the vielle, begging friars and pilgrims. stopping to stare and gossip on their way. Sometimes a performing bear gave Dick half-an-hour's delight; sometimes, if they were delayed by a brook that had overflowed, or by some unusually steep and stony hill, more evil faces of vagabonds, outlaws, bandits, poachers, would peer darkly from the nearest wood, and only the little troop of men-at-arms who rode round my Lady and her household following saved her from being attacked and robbed. There were also the Fellowships to be feared, for the gentlemen of England were a law to themselves in those days, and many, like Jasper Tilney of King's Hall, joined themselves and their men to a few like-minded friends and set out to pick quarrels with travellers on the highway, generally ending in robbery, if not murder. A galloping troop of such as these more than once crossed the roads followed by Lady Marlowe's party; but her armed escort was too strong, even for these foolhardy gentlemen. At a point about half-way in the route two miserable men, unarmed except with hedge-stakes, ragged, starving, and bleeding from undressed wounds, crawled out of a ditch with howls of joy at sight of the Marlowe colors. They were two of the small band that Lord Marlowe had taken with him when he rode to Ruddiford and the north. Under my Lady's stern demand, -why and where had they left his Lordship?-they told the same story as Antonio; how Lord Marlowe had left Ruddiford alone on Christmas morning, sending word to his men to follow him, -how they had followed and followed over the bleak moors, missing the road, plunging into snow-drifts, blinded by storms, till, never overtaking their master, they turned back seeking him towards Ruddiford, and were fallen on by a troop of masked bandits in a narrow place and cut to pieces, most of them killed in defending the treasure they carried, their horses taken, four or five carried off prisoners, three left wounded by the roadside, of whom these two had crawled so far on the way back to Swanlea, the other having died in a ditch, Antonio listened to the story with an immovable face-how did it concern him?-and answered innocently my Lady's question what bold villains in the Ruddiford county could have done this? He might very shrewdly guess: no new proof of Jasper Tilney's desperate way of living astonished him; but he saw no use in naming that fearless young marauder to my Lady, especially as the fate of Lord Marlowe himself occupied her mind far more than that of his slaughtered men. "We must have the country scoured for him," she said, and her dark eyes gleamed with the mysterious, uneasy look that Antonio did not yet quite understand. "Some evil has happened to him; he could not go far on foot and alone." Did she care for Lord Marlowe's safety, or was it her first wish to know that he was out of her way? The Italian was not sure. He would have guessed the second for truth, and now the first possibility startled him. It behoved a man to walk carefully in the sight of those dark eyes. Caresses and flattery and the gift of jewels might mean but a passing fancy, the under side of a character which would crush a plaything on the instant, if any greater interest demanded it. "Hurry on to the utmost," Lady Marlowe commanded, and her cavalcade, the two wretched fugitives mounted on a pack-horse, creaked and struggled forward along the miry lanes. At last they were within half-a-dozen miles of the end of the journey, and Antonio, by her Ladyship's orders, galloped on to warn Sir William of their arrival. With him were Black Andrew and the two other men who had escorted him to Swanlea, and who loved him none the better for the favor he had met with there, and the delay which seemed its consequence. The February afternoon was mild and clear, but it was not far from sunset, and the carriage and litters and train of baggage, travelling slowly, would hardly reach Ruddiford till twilight was falling. The sight of horsemen in the distance, flashing out of the woods, across the flat meadows, disappearing again among the undergrowth, behind the great yews and thorns and hollies that were the advance-guard of the forest, suggested very plainly that this was a country not too safe to ride in, either by night or day. The tired horses were pressed on, but the main body crawled at a long distance behind Antonio and his men. He, too, saw those flitting figures in the distance, and rode the faster, though for himself he did not fear them. The road, running for some way by the river, was commanded by the hill on which King's Hall and the old church stood, the fir-trees round the churchyard serving for a landmark to the flat country. Here the road turned from the river, which circled the hill on one side, and climbing with a gradual twist, reached the desolate flat ground where Harry Marlowe had been unbound from the horse and dragged by Jasper Tilney to King's Hall. From here the house and church were not visible, hidden by the lie of the ground and a few clumps of trees; but lower down the hill the high gables of the old house rose very stately and, looking over the long roof of the church, kept a fierce watch down the southern valley and over the winding course of the river that crept below. Down the hill from King's Hall, helter-skelter, stones flying, came Jasper Tilney on Brown Bob and met Antonio face to face. The men, riding forward, drew bridle a little further on. 66 ""Tis thou, Tony," Jasper cried; “I knew thy black face and slovenly seat a mile off. No hurry,-I have but to whistle, you know, and that fine carriage will be rolled into the ditch. Tell the truth,-is my Lady Marlowe in it?" Antonio's white teeth showed for an instant between his scarlet lips. "What's that to you, Master Tilney?" he answered. "Do you want to shut up the hen as well as the chick?" "Is the hen searching for the chick?" retorted Jasper, with something between a growl and a laugh. "What brings her into these parts? We don't want her, a Yorkist and a wicked witch, they say." "Sir William has appointed her Mistress Margaret's guardian, and on that business she comes. She is no Yorkist and no witch, but a noble lady, with whom you must not interfere." "Do I take orders from you, for eigner?" said Jasper, staring at him fiercely, and fingering the whistle at his neck. "Hark, have you betrayed me to this woman, or does she believe her precious stepson has gone north? Be careful, Tony; you will not deceive me; so long as Alice is at Ruddiford I can trust her to be on my side." ""Tis well if you can trust any one," Antonio said, with a shrug. “Ride on with me, or the carriage will overtake |