To behold the scene which ends this strange, eventful history we must look into a dungeon at Pomfret Castle, and we shall find King Richard still moralizing, drawing out many strange comparisons to show himself to himself. His attention is attracted to

something outside:

Music do I hear?

Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.

Then for a time he holds up before his fevered fancy the notion of time, and how he himself was a sort of clock, telling the minutes and hours by his sighs and groans, till he again bursts forth:

This music mads me: let it sound no more;

For, though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me,
For 'tis a sign of love.

A man who was once a poor groom of the king's stable, with much ado got leave to call and look upon his sometime royal master's face, and that was the last sign of love ever shown him. A king is a dangerous prisoner. The appointed slayer soon opened that dungeon door, the fatal blow was struck, the dead king to the living king was borne, and the curtain falls upon Richard II.

THE STORY OF HENRY IV, 1399-1413.

In the previous story we read of the driving away of Richard II from his throne, and we know that the leader in this rebellion became Henry IV. Henry's most important helpers in this affair were the Percys -the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Worcester, and Henry Hotspur, son of Northumberland.

Not long after the death of Richard a great Welsh chieftain, Owen Glendower by name, having been injured in some manner by one of Henry's high officers in Wales, applied to the king for redress, but in vain.

The Welshman resolved to avenge himself by force of arms, and he drove from his land those who by force had taken possession of it. For this he was declared an outlaw; but, far from taking this treatment meekly, he greatly increased his pretensions.

He had always claimed to be a descendant of the last Welsh prince, and he now reached for the kingship of Wales and the independence of that little country of mountain and glen.

The fires of patriotism among the Welshmen had been only covered, not extinguished, and they gladly responded to Glendower's call.

When Henry led an army into Wales in 1401, the Welsh chieftain was too cunning to risk a pitched

battle. He fell back into the mountains, leaving his two allies, hunger and the climate, to drive away the English. In a second campaign King Henry was not more successful, for the rains raised the rivers and made them impassable, and somehow the flood was always between the king and the rebel chief. As a salve to his wounded pride, Henry tried to believe, and he said, that Glendower was in league with the elements.

At about this time there were serious disturbances in the north of England and two pitched battles fought, in both of which the English defeated the Scotch. At Holmedon Hill the day was won by the English archers alone, the knights not having had to draw their swords or raise their lances. The Percys -Northumberland, his brother Worcester, and his son Harry-had been prominent actors in this campaign, and the Earl of Northumberland marched to London with a great number of prisoners.

The dramatic history of Henry IV consists of the play called Henry IV, Parts I and II, preceded by a substantial and spirited opening in Richard II: the whole, in fact, constituting one great drama, interwoven with which is the end of the play of the unfortunate Richard, and much more than the beginning of that of the triumphant Henry V.

King Henry, not long after the events just hinted at, is sitting in a room of his palace with some of his courtiers. He alludes to some things in the past, and gives utterance to his high hopes for the future— these, however, never to be realized.