This is the prince of leeches¹; fever, plague,

Cold rheum, and hot podagra, do but look on him,

And quit their grasp upon the tortured sinews.

ANONYMOUS².

The Baron³ of Gilsland walked with slow step and an anxious countenance⁴ towards the royal pavilion. He had much diffidence of his own capacity, except in a field of battle, and conscious of no very acute intellect, was usually contented⁵ to wonder at circumstances which a man of livelier imagination would have endeavoured to investigate and understand, or at least would have made the subject of speculation⁶. But it seemed very extraordinary, even to him, that the attention of the bishop⁷ should have been at once abstracted from all reflection on the marvellous cure which they had witnessed, and upon the probability it afforded of Richard being restored to health, by what seemed a very trivial piece of information announcing the motions of a beggardly Scottish knight⁸, than whom Thomas of Gilsland knew nothing within the circle of gentle blood more unimportant or contemptible⁹; and despite his usual habit of passively beholding¹⁰ passing events, the baron’s spirit toiled¹¹ with unwonted attempts to form conjectures¹² on the cause.

At length the idea occurred at once to him that the whole might be a

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