son were overtaken by Anne disguised as a lady of rank, and, acting on her whispered advice to Arthur, they continued their journey by different roads. The elder fell in with a mysterious priest who provided him with a guide to the "Golden Fleece," where he was lowered from his bedroom to appear before a meeting of the Vehmic court or holy tribunal, and warned against speaking of their secret powers. The younger was met and conducted by Annette to a castle, where he spent the evening with his lady-love, and travelled with her the next day to rejoin his father at Strassburg. In the cathedral there they met Margaret of Anjou, who recognised Philipson as John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, a faithful adherent of the house of Lancaster, and planned with him an appeal to the duke for aid against the Yorkists. On reaching Charles's camp the earl was welcomed as an old companion in arms, and obtained a promise of the help he sought, on condition that Provence be ceded to Burgundy. Arthur was despatched to Aix-en-Provence to urge Margaret to persuade her father accordingly, while the earl accompanied his host to an interview with his burghers and the Swiss deputies. King René of Anjou's preference for the society of troubadours and frivolous amusements had driven his daughter to take refuge in a convent. On hearing from Arthur, however, the result of the earl's mission to the duke, she returned to the palace, and had induced her father to sign away his kingdom, when his grandson Ferrand arrived with the news of the rout of the Burgundian army at Neuchâtel, and Arthur learned from his squire, Sigismund, that he had not seen Anne's spectre but herself during his night-watch, and that the priest he had met more than once was her father, the Count Albert of Geierstein. The same evening Queen Margaret died in her chair of state; and all the earl's prospects for England being thwarted, he occupied himself in arranging a treaty between her father and the King of France. He was still in Provence when he was summoned to rouse the duke from a fit of melancholy, caused by the Swiss having again defeated him. After raising fresh troops, Charles decided to wrest Nancy from the young Duke of Lorraine, and during the siege Arthur received another challenge from Rudolph. The rivals met,