She strove to make the holy sign of our redemption, and in making it, yielded her chaste soul to the hands of her merciful Father and loving Redeemer. She had gone to rejoin her own true love, and her poor children were orphans in a world of violence and wrong.
They laid her by the side of Edmund, and the same solemn rites we have described before were yet once more repeated. There were many, many true mourners, all the poor English who felt that her intercession alone had interposed between them and a cruel lord--and the very foreigners themselves, whom her meekness and gentle beauty had strangely touched--all mourned the lily of Aescendune.
But her children!--Who shall describe the sense of desolation which fell upon them as they stood by the open grave?
"Comfort them, O Father of the fatherless," prayed the good prior; "comfort them and defend them with Thy favourable kindness as with a shield."
[CHAPTER V]. A FRAY IN THE GREENWOOD.
After the last sad rites were paid to the Lady Winifred, a deep gloom fell upon Wilfred, and his sorrow was so great that it won respect from his Norman companions, at least for a time.
He was indeed alone, for the baron had sent his sister Edith to a convent for her better education, as he said, and as Wilfred had none of his own kith and kin about him, he avoided all company, save when the routine of each day forced him into the society of his fellow pages.
Such was the case one fine morning in early spring, a few months after the loss of his mother.
The four pages were in the tilt yard, where there stood a wooden figure, called a "quintain," which turned round upon an axis, and held a wooden sword in one hand and a buckler in the other.
It was the duty of each of the athletes to mount his horse, and strike the buckler full in the centre with his lance, while riding by at full speed, under certain penalties, which will soon be perceived.