All you that present be;
For Christ, God’s Son, has brought pardon,
All for to make us free.
As he sang he noticed the shadows of those within the room moving fantastically on the ceiling, and when Sandy in a startlingly sweet treble caught up the air of the refrain, the figure of a lady approached the window and looked forth. The light gleamed on her bare white shoulders, and on the pearl necklace about her slender throat. Gabriel instantly recognised the Queen, and for a minute scarcely wondered at the thraldom in which she contrived to hold her husband, so radiantly beautiful was her face, so full of charm and vivacity her whole bearing. She turned her head now and imperiously beckoned to some one within.
Gabriel, still with the strangest sense of unreality, sang another verse, half-fancying himself once more in the snowy garden at Hereford, half expecting to catch sight of brave Sir John Eliot’s snow effigy.
He thought no scorn for to be born
Of a birth both low and small;
Betwixt ox and ass in a crib He was
Laid poorly in a stall;
To the shepherds in fold the thing was told,