Dressing herself from head
to foot in white, and accompanied by three knights similarly attired,
she slipped out of a postern in the hope of being unseen against the
whiteness of the snow-clad surface.
Stephen's camp was asleep, its sentinels alone being astir. The scared
fugitives glided on foot through the snow, passing close to the enemy's
posts, the voices of the sentinels sounding in their ears. On foot they
crossed the frozen Thames, gained horses on the opposite side, and
galloped away in hasty flight.
There is little more to say. Maud's cause was at an end. Not long
afterwards her brother died, and she withdrew to Normandy, glad,
doubtless, to be well out of that pestiferous island, but, mayhap,
mourning that her arrogant folly had robbed her of a throne.
A few years afterwards her son Henry took up her cause, and landed in
England with an army. But the threatened hostilities ended in a truce,
which provided that Henry should reign after Stephen's death. Stephen
died a year afterwards, England gained an able monarch, and prosperity
returned to the realm after fifteen years of the most frightful misery
and misrule.
_THE CAPTIVITY OF RICHARD COEUR DE LION._
In the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1192, a pirate vessel
touched land on the coast of Sclavonia, at the port of Yara.
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