Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 2.djvu/444

432 three days without meeting a single habitation. Their food was reduced to the few berries which they were able to collect; and the children, unaccustomed to such hard fare, began to sink under the accumulated difficulties of their journey. In this situation they were stopped by a wide and rapid though shallow river. Sir Isumbras, taking his eldest son in his arms, carried him over to the opposite bank, and placing him under a bush of broom, directed him to dry his tears, and amuse himself by playing with the blossoms till his return with his brother. But scarcely had he left the place when a lion, starting from a neighbouring thicket, seized the child, and bore him away into the recesses of the forest. The second son, became, in like manner, the prey of an enormous leopard; and the disconsolate mother, when carried over with her infant to the fatal spot, was with difficulty persuaded to survive the loss of her two elder children. Sir Isumbras, though he could not repress the tears extorted by this cruel calamity, exerted himself to console his wife, and, humbly confessing his sins, contented himself with praying that his present misery might be accepted by Heaven as a partial expiation.