'How!' she cried wildly. 'He fell into the hands of your English, and—'

'He fell into the hands of your King and mine,' said Malcolm. 'Yes, King James dragged him out of the burning house, and wrung his pardon out of King Harry. He came with me to St. Abbs to fetch you, Lily, and only went back because his knighthood would not serve in this quest like my clerkship.'

'Patrick living, Patrick safe! Oh!' she fell on her knees among the ferns, hid her face in her hands, and drew a long breath. 'Malcolm, this is joy overmuch. The desolation of yesterday, the joy to-day!'

Malcolm, seeing her like one stifled by emotion, fell on his knees beside her, and whispered forth a thanksgiving. She rested with her head on his shoulder in content till he started up, saying in a lively manner, 'Come, Lily, we must be on our way. A very bonnie young clerk you are, with your berry-brown locks cut so short round your face.'

Lilias blushed up to the short dark curls she had left herself. 'Had I thought he lived, I could scarce have done it.'

'What, not to get to him, silly maid? Here,' as he shook out and donned the gown he had brought rolled up, 'now am I a scholar too. Stay, you must take off this badge of the bachelor; you have only been in a monastery school, you know; you are my young brother—what shall we call you?'

'Davie,' softly suggested Lilias.

'Ay, Davie then, that I've come home to fetch to share my Paris lear. You can be very shy and bashful, you know, and leave all the knapping of Latin and logic to me.'

'If it is such as you did with Jamie Kennedy,' said Lilias, 'it will indeed be well. Oh, Malcolm, I sat and marvelled at ye—so gleg ye took him up. How could ye learn it? And ye are a brave warrior too in battles,' she added, looking him over with a sister's fond pride.

'We have had no battle, no pitched field,' said Malcolm 'but I have seen war.'

'So that ugly words can never be flung in your face again!' cried Lilias. 'Are you knighted, brother?'

'No, but they say I have won my spurs. I'll tell you all, Lily, as we walk. Only let me bestow this iron cap where some mavis may nestle in it. Ay, and the boots too, which scarce befit a clerk. There, your hand, Clerk Davie; we must make westward to-day, lest poor Duke Murdoch be forced to send to chase us. After that, for the Border and Patie.'

So brother and sister set forth on their wandering—and truly it was a happy journey. The weather favoured them, and their hearts were light. Lilias, delivered from terrible, hopeless captivity, her brother beside her, and now not a brother to be pitied and protected, but to protect her and be exulted in, trod the heather with an exquisite sense of joy and freedom that buoyed her up against all hardships; and Malcolm was at peace, as he had seldom been. His happiness was not exactly like his sister's in her renewed liberty and restoration to love and joy, for he had known a wider range of life, and though really younger than Lily, his more complicated history could not but make him older in thought and mind. Another self-abnegation was beginning to rise upon him, as he travelled slowly southwards by stages suited to his sister's powers, and by another track than that by which he had gone. On the moor, or by the burn side, there was peace and brightness; but wherever he met with man he found something to sadden him. Did they rest in a monastery, there was often irregularity, seldom devotion, always crass ignorance. The manse was often a scene of such dissolute life that Malcolm shunned to bring his sister into the sight of it; the peel tower was the dwelling of savagery; the farm homestead either rude and lawless or in constant terror; the black spaces on many a brae side showed where dwellings had been burned; more than once they passed skeletons depending from the trees or lying rotting by the way-side. And it was frightful to Malcolm, after his four years' absence, to find how little Lilias shared his horror, taking quite naturally what to Alice Montagu would have seemed beyond the bounds of possibility, and would have set Esclairmonde's soul on fire, while Lilias seemed to think it her brother's amiable peculiarity to be shocked, or to long to set such things straight.

He felt the truth of James Kennedy's words—that reformation could not be the sole work of the King, but that his hands must be strengthened by all the few who knew that a different state of things was possible, and that, above all, the clergy needed to be awakened into vigour and intelligence. Formerly, the miserable aspect of the country had merely terrified him, and driven him to strive to hide his head in a convent; but the strength and the sense of duty he had acquired had brought his heart to respond to Kennedy's call to work.

Esclairmonde's words wrought within him beyond her own ken or purpose in speaking them. He began to understand that to bury himself in an Italian university and dive into Aristotle's sayings, to heap up his own memory with the stores of thought he loved, or to plunge into the mazes of mathematics, philosophy, and music, while his brethren in his own country were tearing one another to pieces for lack of any good influence to teach or show them better things, would be a storing of treasure for himself on earth, a pursuit of the light of knowledge indeed, but not a wooing of the light of Wisdom, the true Light of the World, as seen in Him who went about doing good. To complete his present course was, he knew, necessary. He had seen enough of really learned scholars to know the depths of his own ignorance, and to be aware that certain books must be read under guidance, and certain studies gone through, before his cultivation would be on a level with the standard of the best working clergy of the English Church—such as Chicheley, Waynflete, or the like. He would therefore remain at Oxford, he thought, long enough to take his Master of Arts degree, and then, though to his own perceptions only the one-eyed among the blind, he would make the real sacrifice of himself in the rude and cruel world of Scotland.

He knew that his king was well satisfied with Patrick, and also that a man of sound heart and prompt, hard hand was far fitter to rule as a secular lord than his own more fine-drawn mature could ever be; but as a priest, with the influence that his birth and the King's friendship would give him, he already saw chances of raising the tone of the clergy, and thus improving the wild and lawless people.

A deep purpose of self-devotion was growing up in his soul, but without saddening him, only rendering him more energetic and cheerful than his sister had ever known him.

As they walked together over the long stretches of moor, many were Lily's questions; and Malcolm beguiled the way with many a story of camp and court, told both for his own satisfaction in her sympathy, and with the desire to make the Scottish lassie see what was the life and what the thoughts of ladies of her own degree in other lands, so that the Lady of Glenuskie might be awake to somewhat of the high purpose of virtuous home government to which Alice of Salisbury had been trained.

As to the Flemish heiress, no representation would induce Lilias to love her. Reject Malcolm for a convent's sake! It was unpardonable; and as to a bedeswoman, working uncloistered in the streets, Lily viewed that as neither the one thing nor the other, neither religious nor secular; and she was persuaded that a little exertion on the part of the brother, whom she viewed as a paladin, would overcome all coyness on the lady's part.

Malcolm found it vain to try to show his sister his sense of his own deserts, and equally so to declare that if the maiden should so yield, she would indeed be the Demoiselle de Luxemburg to whom he was pledged, but not the Esclairmonde whom his better part adored. So he let the matter pass by, and both enjoyed their masquing in one another's company as a holiday such as they could never have again.

They had no serious alarms; the pursuit must have been disconcerted, and the two young scholars were not worth the attention of freebooters. Their winsomeness of manner won them kindness wherever they harboured; and thus, after many days, without molestation they came to the walls of Berwick. And now, while Malcolm thought his difficulties at an end, a horror of bashfulness fell upon Lilias. She had been Clerk Davie merrily enough while there was no one to suspect her, but the transmutation into her proper self filled her with shame.

She hung back, and could be hardly dragged forward to the embattled gateway of the bridge by her brother—who, as the guards, jealously cautious even in this time of peace, called out to him to stand, showed his ring bearing the royal arms, and desired to speak within the captain of the garrison, who was commanding in the name of the Earl of Northumberland, Governor of Berwick and Warden of the Marches, and who had entertained him on his way north, and would have been warned by Patrick of his probable return in this guise.

Instead of the stalwart form of the veteran sub-governor, however, a quick step came hurrying to the gateway, and the light figure of a young knight stood before him, with outstretched hands, crying: 'Welcome to the good town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, dear comrade!' And he added in a lower tone: 'So you have succeeded in your quest—if, as I trow, this fairest of clerks be your lady sister. May I—'

'Hold!' softly said Malcolm. 'She is so shamefast that she cannot brook a word;' and in fact Lilias had pulled her hood over her face, and shrunk behind him, at the first approach of the young gentleman.

'We will to my mother,' said Ralf, aloud. 'She has always a soft corner in her heart for a young clerk or a wanderer.'

And so saying, without even looking at the disguised figure, he gave the pass-word, and holding Malcolm by the arm, led him, followed by Lilias, through the defences and into the court of the castle, then to a side- door, where, bounding up several steps at once of a stone stair, he opened a sort of anteroom door, and bade the two strangers wait there while he fetched his mother.

'That is well! Who would have looked to see him here!' cried Malcolm, joyously. 'What, you knew him not? It was Ralf Percy, my dear old companion!'

'Ralf Percy! he that was so bold and daring?' cried Lilias. 'Nay, but how can it be, he was as meek and shamefast—'

'As yourself,' smiled Malcolm. 'Ah, sister, you have much to learn of the ways of an English gentleman among ladies.'

Before many further words could be exchanged, there entered a fair and matronly dame in the widow's veil she had worn ever since the fatal day of Shrewsbury—that eager, loving, yet almost childish woman whom we know so well as Hotspur's gentle Kate (only that unfortunately her name was Elizabeth); fondling, teasing, being fondled and teased in return, and then with all her pretty puerilities scorched away when she upbraids Northumberland with his fatal delay. Could Malcolm and Lilias have known her as we do in Shakespeare, they would have been the more gratified by her welcome, whereas they only saw her kind face and the courtly sweep of her curtsey, as, going straight up to the disguised girl, blushing and trembling now more than ever, she said: 'Poor child, come with me, and we will soon have you yourself again, ere any other eye see you;' and then moved away again, holding Lily by the hand, while Ralf, who had followed close behind her, again grasped Malcolm's hand.

'Well done, Glenuskie; you have all the adventures! They seek you, I believe! So you have borne off your damosel errant, and are just in time to receive your king.'

'Is he wedded then?'

'Ay, and you find us all here in full state, prepared to banquet him and lodge him and his bride for a night, and then I fancy my brother is to go through some ceremony, ere giving him up to his own subjects. We are watching for him every day. Come to my chamber, and I'll apparel you.'

'Nay, but what brings you here, Ralf?—you, whom I thought in France.'

''Twas a Scottish bill that brought me,' answered Ralf. 'What, are you too lost in parchment at Oxford to hear of us poor soldiers, or knew you not how we fought at Crevant?'

'I heard of the battle, and that you were hurt, but that was months ago, and I deemed you long since in the field again. Was it so sore a matter?'

'Chiefly sore for that it hindered me from taking the old rogue Douglas, and meriting my spurs as befitted a Percy. I was knighted while the trumpet was sounding, and I did think that I was on the way to prowess, for fully in the melee I saw a fellow with the Douglas banner. I made at it, thinking of my father's and of Otterburn; and, Malcolm, this very hand was on the staff, when what must a big Scot do but chop at me with his bill like a butcher's axe. Had it fallen on mine arm it would have been lopped off like a bough of a tree, but, by St. George's grace, it lit here, between my neck and shoulder, and stuck fast as I went down, and the fellow was swept away from me. 'Twas so fixed in the very bone, that they had much ado to wrench it out, when there was time after the fight to look after us who had come by the worse. And what d'ye think they found, Malcolm? Why, those honest Yorkshiremen, Trenton and Kitson, stark dead, both of them. Trenton must have gone down first, with a lance-thrust in the throat; and there was Kitson over him, his shield over his head, and his own cleft open with an axe! They laid them side by side—so I was told—in their grave; and sure 'twas as strange and as true a brotherhood as ever was between two brave men.'

'The good fellows!' cried Malcolm. 'Nay, after what I saw I can hardly grieve. I went to Kitson's home, where they knew as little as I did of his death, and verily his place had closed up behind him, so that I scarce think his mother even cared to see him more, and the whole of them seemed more concerned at his amity with Trenton than proud of his feats of arms. I was marvelling if their friendship would be allowed to subsist at home, even when they, poor fellows, were lying side by side in their French grave.'

'We warriors should never come home,' said Percy; 'we are spoilt for aught but our French camp. I am wearying to get back once more, but so long as I cannot swing my sword-arm I must play the idler here.'

'It must have been a fearsome wound,' said Malcolm. 'The marvel is your overgetting it.'

'So say they all; and truly it has lasted no small time. They shipped me off home so soon as I could leave my bed, and bade me rest. Nay, and my mother herself came even to London, when my brother was summoned to Parliament,—she who had never been there since the first year after she was wedded!'

'You can scarce complain of such kin as that,' said Malcolm.

''Tis not the kin, but this petty Border life, that frets me. Here we move from castle to castle, and now and then come tidings of a cattle lifting, and Harry dons his helm and rides forth, but nine times out of ten 'tis a false alarm, or if it be true, the thieves have made off, and being time of peace, he, as Warden, cannot make a raid in return. I'm sick of the life, after the only warfare fit for a knight, with French nobles instead of Border thieves; and back I will. If my right arm will not serve me, the left shall. I can use a lance indifferent well already.'

As Sir Ralf Percy spoke, a bugle-call rang through the castle. He started. 'Hark! that's the warder's horn,' and flying to the door, he soon returned crying—'Your king is in sight, Malcolm!'

'How soon will he be here?'

'In less than half an hour. There's time to array yourself. I'll take you to my chamber.'

'Thanks,' said Malcolm; 'but this gown is no disguise to me. I had rather meet the King thus, for it is my fitting garb. Only I would remove the soil of the journey, and then take my sister by the hand.'

For this there was ample time, and Malcolm had arranged his hair, and brushed away the dust from his gown, washed his face and hands, and made himself look more like an Oxford bachelor, and less like a begging clerk, than he had of late judged it prudent to appear, ere Ralf took him to the great hall, where he found Lord Northumberland and the chief gentlemen of his household, with his mother, Lady Percy, and his young wife, together with their ladies, assembling for the reception of their royal guests.

Malcolm was presented to, and kindly greeted by, each of the principal personages, and then the Earl, Sir Ralf, and their officers went forth to meet the King at the gateway. Malcolm, however, at his sister's entreaty, remained with her, for in the doubt whether Patrick were really at hand, and a fond unreasonable vexation that he had had no part in her liberation, her colour was coming and going, and she looked as if she might almost faint in her intense excitement.

But when, marshalled by the two Percies, King James and Queen Joan had entered the hall, and the blare of trumpets without and rejoicings within, and had been welcomed with deep reverences by the two ladies, Ralf said: 'Sir, methinks you have here what you may be glad to see.'

And standing aside, he made way for the two figures to stand forth, one in the plain black gown and hood, the other in the rich robes of a high- born maiden, her dark eyes on the ground, her fair face quivering within emotion, as both she and her brother bent the knee before their royal master.

'Ha!' cried James, 'this is well indeed. Thou hast her, then, lad? See, Patrick! Where is he? Nay, but, fair wife, I must present thee the first kinswoman of mine thou hast seen. How didst bring her off, Malcolm?' And he embraced Malcolm with the ardour of a happy man, as he added, 'This is all that was wanting.'

Truly James looked as if nothing were wanting to his joy, as there he stood after his years of waiting, a bridegroom, free, and on the borders of his native land. His eyes shone with joy, and there was a bright energy and alacrity in his bearing that, when Malcolm bethought him of those former grave movements, and the quiet demeanour as though only interested by an effort, marked the change from the captive to the free man. And beautiful Joan, lovelier than ever, took on her her queenly dignity with all her wonted grace and graciousness.

She warmly embraced Lilias, hailing her as cousin, and auguring joyously of the future from the sight of this first Stewart maiden whom she had seen; and the next moment Patrick Drummond, hurrying forward, fell on his knee before his lady, grasped, kissed, fondled her hand, and struggled and stammered between his rejoicing over her liberation and despair that he had no part in it.

'Yea,' said the King 'it was well-nigh a madman whom you sent home to me, Malcolm. He was neither to have nor to hold; and what he would have had me do, or have let him do, I'll not say, nor doth he know either. I must hear your story ere I sleep, Malcolm.'

The King did not ask for it then: he would not brook the exposure of the disunion and violence of Scotland to the English, especially the Percies; and it was not till he could see Malcolm alone that he listened to his history.

'Cousin,' he said, 'you have done both bravely and discreetly. Methinks you have redeemed my pledge to your good guardian that in the south you should be trained to true manhood; though I am free to own that 'twas not under my charge that you had the best training. How is it to be, Malcolm? Patrick tells me you saw the Lady of Light.'

'Ay, Sir, but neither her purpose nor mine is shaken. My lord, I believe I see how best to serve God and yourself. If you will consent, I will finish my first course at Oxford, and then offer myself for the priesthood.'

'Not hide thyself in cloister or school—that is well!' exclaimed the King.

'No, Sir. Methinks I could serve yonder rude people best if I were among them as a priest.'

James considered, then said: 'I pledged myself not to withstand your conscience, Malcolm; and though I grieve that the lady should be lost, she has never wavered, and cannot be balked of her will. Godly and learned priests will indeed be needed; and between you and James Kennedy, when both are come to elder years, we may perchance lift our poor Scottish Church to some clearer sense of what a church should be. Meanwhile—' The King stopped and considered. 'Study in England! Ay! You see, Malcolm, I must take my seat, and have the reins of my unruly steed firm in my hand, ere I take cognizance of these offences. The caitiff Walter—mansworn that he is—he shall abye it; but that can scarce be as yet, and methinks it were not well that I entered Scotland with you and your sister at my side, for then must I seem to have overlooked an offence that, by this holy relic, I will never pardon. So, Malcolm, instead of entering Scotland with me—bonnie land, how sweet its air blows from the north!—ye must e'en turn south! But how to dispose of your sister? Some nunnery—'

'Poor Lily, she is weary of convents,' said Malcolm 'but if Lady Montagu would let her be with her and the Lady Esclairmonde, then would she learn somewhat of the ways of a well-ordered English noble house. And I could well provide for her being there as befits her station.'

'Well thought of! The gentle Lady Alice will no doubt welcome her,' said the King; 'and Patrick must endure.'

Thus then was it fixed. The King and Queen, stately and beautiful, royally robed, and mounted on splendid steeds, were escorted the next morning to the Scottish gate of Berwick by Lord Northumberland and his retinue, and they were met by an imposing band of Scottish nobles, with the white-haired Earl of Lennox at their head. To these the captive was formally surrendered by Northumberland; and James, flinging himself from his horse, kissed his native soil, and gave thanks aloud to God, ere he stood up and received the homage of his subjects, to most of whom he was a total stranger.

Malcolm and Lilias on the walls could see all, but could not hear, and finally beheld the glittering troop wind their way over the hills to make ready for the coronation of James and Joan as king and queen of Scotland.



CHAPTER XIX: THE LION'S WRATH

It was the 24th of May, 1425, when in the vaulted hall of the Castle of Stirling the nobles of Scotland were convened to try, as the peers of the realm, men of rank—no less than Murdoch, Duke of Albany, his sons Walter and Alexander, the Earl of Lennox, and twenty-two other nobles, most of whom had been arraigned in the Parliament of Perth two months previously, and had been shut up in different castles. Robert Stewart had escaped to the Highlands; and Walter—who had neither been at the Coronation of Scone, nor at the Parliament of Perth, nor indeed had ever bowed his pride so as to present himself to the King at all—had been separately arrested, and shut up for two months in the strong castle on the Bass Rock.

The charge was termed treason and violence; and assuredly there had been perpetual acts of spoil and barbarous infractions of the law by men who deemed themselves above all law. The only curiosity was, for which of these acts they were to be tried, and this affected many of their judges likewise; for there was hardly a man in that court who was not conscious of some deed that would not exactly bear to be set beside the code of Scotland, and who had not been in the habit of regarding those laws as all very well for burghers, but not meant for gentlemen.

There, on seats behind the throne, sat the twenty-one jurors, Earl Douglas among them—a new earl, for the grim old Archibald had died in the battle of Verneuil some months before. Angus, March, and Mar, and all the most powerful names in Scotland, were there; and upon his throne, in regal robes of crimson and ermine, the crown upon his brow, the sceptre in his hand, the sword of state held before him, sat King James, the most magnificent-looking king then reigning in Europe, but with the sternest, saddest, most resolute of countenances, as one unalterably fixed upon the terrible duty of not bearing the sword in vain. Something of Henry's avenging-angel look seemed to have passed into his face, but with far more of melancholy weight.

Walter Stewart was led into the court. He too was a man of lofty stature and princely bearing, and his grand Stewart features were set in an expression of easy nonchalance and scorn; aware as he was that of whatever he might be accused, there were few of his judges that did not share the guilt, and moreover persuaded that this was a mere ceremony, and that the King would never dare to go beyond this futile attempt to overawe him. He stood alone—his father and the others were reserved for another trial; and as, richly arrayed, he stood opposite to the jury, gazing fixedly first at one, then at the other, as though challenging their right to sit in judgment on him, one eye after another fell beneath his gaze.

'Walter Stewart of Albany, Earl of Fife,' proclaimed the crier's voice. 'You stand here arraigned of murder and of robbery.'

'At whose suit?' demanded Walter, undaunted.

'At the suit of Malcolm and Lilias Stewart of Glenuskie; and of Patrick Drummond of the Braes,' returned the crier, an ecclesiastic, as were all lawyers; and at the same moment three figures came forward, namely, a tall knightly gentleman with gold chain and spurs, a lady whose veil disclosed a blushing dark-eyed face, and a slender youth of deep and earnest countenance. 'At the suit of these here present you stand arraigned, Sir Walter Stewart of Albany, for having feloniously, and of malice aforethought, on the Eve of the Annunciation of our Lady, of the year of grace 1421, set upon the said Malcolm and Lilias Stewart, Sir David Drummond of the Braes, Tutor of Glenuskie, and divers other persons, on the muir of Hetherfield; and having there cruelly and maliciously wounded the said David of the Braes to the death; and of having forcibly stolen and abducted the person of the said Lilias Stewart—'

The crier was not permitted to proceed, for Walter Stewart broke forth, passionately addressing the jurors. 'So this is all that can be found to be laid against me. This is the way that matters of five years back are raked up to vex the princes and nobles of Scotland. I am sorry for you, lords and gentlemen, if this is the way that vexatious are to be stirred up against those who have defended their country so long.'

'This is no answer to the accusation, Sir Walter,' said the Earl of Mar.

'Accusation, forsooth!' said Walter Stewart scornfully. 'Who dares to bear witness, if I did maintain my father's lawful authority over peevish runaway wards of the Crown?'

'Sir Walter,' said the King, 'you would have done better to have waited and heard the whole indictment ere answering one charge. But since you demand who will dare to bear witness in this matter of the murder of Sir David Drummond of the Braes, and of the seizure of the Lady Lilias, here is one.'

So saying, and rising as he spoke, he held forth the reliquary that hung from a chain round his neck, keeping his gleaming tawny eyes fixed steadily straight upon Walter Stewart's face.

That face, as he first had stood up, expressed the utmost amazement, and this gradually, under the lion glance, became more and more of dismay, quailing, collapsing visibly under the passionless gravity of that look. Even the tall form seemed to shrink, the eyes dilated, the brows drew closer together, and the chest seemed to pant, as the relic was held forth. There was a dead silence throughout the court as the King ceased to speak; only he continued to bend that searching gaze upon his prisoner.

'Was it you?—was it your own self, my lord?' he stammered forth at last, in the tone of one stricken.

'Yea, Walter Stewart. To me it was, and on this holy relic, that you made oath to abstain from all further spoil and violence until the King should come again in peace. How that oath has been kept the further indictments will show.'

'I deemed it was St. Andrew,' faltered the prisoner.

'And therefore that the oath to a heavenly saint would better bear breaking than one to an earthly sinner,' replied James gravely. 'Read on, Clerk of the Court.'

The roll continued—a long and terrible record of violence and cruelty; the private warfare of the lawless young prince, the crimes of reckless barbarity and of savage passion—a deadly roll, in which indeed even the second abduction of Lilias was one of the least acts laid to his charge.

No lack of witnesses were there to prove deeds that had been done in the open face of day, in utter fearlessness of earthly justice, and defiance of Heaven. The defence that the prisoner seemed to have been prepared to us?—that those who sat to judge him had shared in his offences, and his daring power of brow-beating them, as he had so often done before, as son of the man who sat in the King's seat—had utterly failed him now. He was mute; and the forms of the trial were gone through as of one whose doom was already sealed, but who must receive his sentence according to the strictest form of law, lest the just reward of his deeds should partake of their own violence. By the end of the day the jurors had found Walter Stewart guilty; and the doomster, a black-robed clerk, rising up, pronounced the sentence that condemned Walter Stewart of Albany to suffer death by beheading.

Even then no one believed that the doom would be inflicted. Royal blood had never flowed beneath the headsman's axe; and it would have been infinitely more congenial to Scottish feelings if the King had sent a party of men-at-arms to fall on the Master in the high road, and cut him off, or had burnt him alive in his castle. The verdict 'served him right' would have been universally returned, and rejoiced in; but a regular trial of a man of such birth was unheard of, and shocking to the feelings even of those whom that irresistible force of the King's had compelled to sit in judgment upon him. No one could avow it face to face with the King; but every one felt it an outrage to find that no rank was exempt from law.

Duke Murdoch, his son Alexander, and his father-in-law Lennox, were tried the next day, and many a deed of dark treason was laid to their charge. The Earl of Lennox had been the scourge of Scotland for more than half the eighty years of his life, but his extreme age might have excited some pity; Murdoch had erred rather negatively than positively; and Alexander, ruffian as he was, had been bred to nothing better. Each had deserved the utmost penalty of the law again and again, and yet there did seem more scope for mercy in their case than in that of Walter.

But the King was inexorable. He set Malcolm aside as he had set others.

'I know what you would say, lad. Lennox is old, and Alexander is young, and Albany is a fool; and Walter has injured you, so you are bound to speak for him. Take it all as said. But these are the men who have been foremost in making our country a desert! Did I pardon them, with what face could I ever make any man suffer for crime? And, in the state of this land, ruth to the guilty high would be treason to the sackless low.'

So Stirling saw the unprecedented sight of three generations suffering for their crimes upon the same scaffold—the white-haired Lennox, the Duke of Albany in the prime of life, Walter in the flush and strength of early manhood, Alexander in the bloom of youth. They all met their fate undauntedly; for if Murdoch's heart in any measure failed him, he was afraid to give way in presence of the proud bold Walter, who maintained an iron rigidity of demeanour with the wild fortitude of a Red Indian at the stake, and in like manner could by no means comprehend that King James acted from any motive save malice, for having been so long kept out of his kingdom. 'It was his turn now,' said poor Murdoch, even when most desirous of bringing himself to die in a state of Christian forgiveness; nor could any power on earth show any of the criminals that the King acted in the eternal interests of right and justice.

Thus it was with the whole country; and when the four majestic-looking men stood bare-headed on the scaffold, in view even of their own fair towers of Doune, and one by one bowed their heads on the block, perverse Scottish nature broke out into pity for their fate, and wrath against the King, who could thus turn against his own blood, and disgrace the royal lineage.

On that same day Malcolm received Esclairmonde's token, there being at present full peace with England, and set forth on her summons. He met her at Pontefract, where she was residing with the Dowager Queen Joan of Navarre, Alice of Salisbury having been summoned to return to her husband in France.

There then it was that Malcolm and Esclairmonde, in presence of the chaplain, gave each other back the rings, and therewith their troth to wed none other, and were once more declared free.

Esclairmonde held out her hand to Malcolm, saying, 'The thanks I owe you, Sir, are beyond what tongue can tell. May He to Whom my first vows were due requite it to you.'

And Malcolm, with his knee to the ground, pressing for the last time that fair hand, said, 'The thanks, lady, are mine. Had you been one whit lower in aims or in constancy, what had I been? You were my light of the world, but to light me to seek that higher Light that shone forth in you, and which may I show truly to the darkened spirits of my countrymen! Lady, you will permit me to take to myself the ring you have worn so long. It will be my token of my betrothal to that true Light.'

Such was their parting, when the one went forth to her tasks of charity among the poor in London, the other to divest himself of land and lordship on behalf of his sister and her husband, and then to begin his task in the priesthood, of trying to hold up the true Light to hearts darkened by many an age of crime and ignorance.

Lived very happy ever after! Yes, we would fain always leave the creatures with whom our thoughts have been busy in such felicity; but when we have linked them with real events, the sense of the veritable course of history reminds us that we cannot even suppose beings possible in real life without endowing them with the common lot of humanity; and the personages of our tale lived in a time of more than ordinary reverse and trouble.

Yet Sir Patrick Drummond and Lilias his wife, the Lord and Lady of Glenuskie, nearly did fulfil these conditions. They had not feelings beyond their age, but they were good specimens of that age, and they did their duty in it; he as a trustworthy noble, ready to aid in council or war, and she as the beneficent dame, bringing piety and charity to heal the sufferings of her vassals and serfs. His hand was strong enough to repel the attacks of his foes; her intelligence, backed by Malcolm's counsel, introduced improvements; and the little ravine of Glenuskie was a happy valley of peace and prosperity for many years among the convulsions of Scotland.

Nor was Esclairmonde de Luxemburg's life in the Hospital of St. Katharine otherwise than the holy and beneficent career that she had always longed for—worshipping in the fair church, and going forth from thence 'into the streets and lanes of the city,' to fulfil Queen Philippa's pious behest, to seek out the suffering and the ignorant, and to tend and instruct them. The tall form and beautiful countenance of Sister Clare were loved and reverenced as those of an angel messenger among the high houses and courts that closed in on the banks of the Thames; and while Luxemburgs in France and Flanders intrigued and fought, plotted and fell, their kinswoman's days passed by in busy alms-deeds and ever loftier devotion, till those who watched her steps felt that she was verily a light of the world, manifesting forth the true Light in many a dark place.

And her light of sympathy shone upon many an old friend both in joy and in grief. When the dissensions of Gloucester and Beaufort had summoned Bedford to England to endeavour to appease their strife, his Burgundian Duchess sought out her early friend, and Esclairmonde saw her gentle companion, the Lady Anne, fulfilling her daily task of mediation, and living a life, not indeed very sunshiny, but full of all that esteem and respect could give her, and of calm gratitude and affection, although Anne, like all others, believed that John of Bedford's heart had been buried in his brother's grave, and that of youthful love he had none to give. His whole soul was absorbed in his care for the welfare of the pale, gentle, dreamy, inanimate boy, who, from his very meekness and docility, gave so little promise of representing the father whose name he bore.

The loving Alice of Montagu, though the mother of many a bold boy and girl, and busy with all the cares of the great Nevil household, regarded as the chief delight in a journey to court the sight of her dear Sister Clare. It was to Sister Clare that Alice turned for comfort when her brave old father died at the siege of Orleans; and it was while daily soothing and ministering to her sorrow that Esclairmonde heard the strange wild tales of the terrible witch maiden who had appeared on behalf of the French, and turned whole English armies to flight, by power that the French declared to come from the saints, but which the English never doubted to be infernal. Maimed and wounded soldiers, whom Esclairmonde relieved and tended as they returned from lost battles, gave her fearful accounts of the panic that La Pucelle inspired. Even the hardy veteran, Sir John Fastolfe, had not been able to withstand her spells, but had fled from the field of Jergeau, where gallant Sir Ralf Percy had died, in a vain attempt to gather the men to resist the irresistible maiden. His groom, who had succumbed for a time to wounds and weakness on his way home to Alnwick, was touched by the warmth and emotion with which the kind bedeswoman listened to his lamentation over the good and loyal knight, whom she pictured to herself resisting the enchantress's dread power as dauntlessly as he had defied the phantoms of the Dance of Death.

No whisper ever reached Esclairmonde that the terrible Pucelle was a maiden as pure and high-souled as herself. All that she heard more was that this terror of the English and Burgundians was taken, imprisoned for a time by her own Luxemburg kindred, and then carried to Rouen, where the kind Duchess Anne of Bedford did her best to persuade her to overcome the superstition that kept her in male garments, thus greatly tending to increase the belief in her connection with the powers of evil. French and Burgundian bishops, and even the University of Paris, were the judges of the maiden; and the dastard prince she had crowned never stirred a finger nor uttered a protest in her behalf. Bedford, always disposed to belief in witchcraft, acquiesced in the decision of Churchmen, which was therefore called the judgment of the Church; but when he removed himself and his duchess from Rouen, and left the conduct of the matter to the sterner and harder Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, it was with little thought that after-generations would load his memory with the fate of Jeanne d'Arc, as though her sufferings had proceeded from his individual malice.

Esclairmonde never saw Bedford again, and only heard through Alice, now Countess of Salisbury, how when good Duchess Anne was dead, and her gentle influence removed, Burgundy's disinclination to the English cause was no longer balanced; and how Bedford, perplexed, disheartened, broken in health, but still earnest to propitiate friends for his helpless nephew, had listened to the wily whisper of the Bishop of Therouenne, that his niece, Jaquette, would secure the devotion of the Count de St. Pol, and that she was moreover like unto another Demoiselle de Luxemburg.

How like, Esclairmonde could judge, when her kinswoman, widowed in her eighteenth year, at six months' end, came to London to claim her dower. Never, since her days of wandering and anxiety, had Esclairmonde felt such pain as when she perceived how little store the thoughtless girl had set by the great and noble spirit that had been quenched under the load of toil and care with which it had battled for thirteen long years. Faithful, great-hearted Bedford, striving to uphold a losing cause, to reconcile selfish contentions, to retain conquests that, though unjustly made, he had no power to relinquish; and all without one trustworthy relation, with friends and fellow-warriors dying, disputing, betraying, or deserting, his was as self-devoted and as mournful a career as ever was run by any prince at any age of the world; and while he slept in his grave at Rouen, that grave which even Louis XI. respected, Esclairmonde, as, like a true bedeswoman of St. Katharine, she joined in the orisons for the repose of the souls of the royal kindred, never heard the name of the Lord John without a throb of prayer, and a throb too that warmed her heart with tenderness.

It was some four years later, and the even tenor of Sister Clare's course had only been interrupted by her kinswoman, Jaquette, making her way to her to confess her marriage with Richard Wydville, and to entreat her intercession with the Luxemburg family; when one summer night she was called on to attend a pilgrim priest from the Holy Land, who had been landed from a Flemish vessel, and lay dangerously sick at the 'God's house,' or hospital, by the river side. He was thought by his accent to be foreign, and Sister Clare was always called on to wait upon the stranger.

As she stood by his bedside, she beheld a man of middle age, but wasted with sickness, and with a certain strange look of horror so imprinted on his brow, that even as he lay asleep, though his mouth was grave and peaceful, the lines were still there, and the locks that hung from around his tonsure were of a whiteness that scarce accorded with the features. It was a face that Esclairmonde could not look at without waking strange memories; but it was not till the sleeper awakened, opened two dark eyes, gazed on her with dreamy doubtful wonder, and then clasped his hands with the murmured thanksgiving, 'My God, hast Thou granted me this? Light of my life!' that she was assured to whom she was speaking.

Malcolm Stewart it verily was. Canon Malcolm Stewart of Dunkeld was his proper title, for he had, as she knew, long ceased to be Lord of Glenuskie. It was not at first that she knew how he had been brought where she now saw him; but after some few days of her tender care and skilful leechcraft, he somewhat rallied, and she gathered his history from his conversation when he was able to speak.

He had had a time of happy labour in Scotland, fully carrying out the designs with which he and his cousin James Kennedy had taken upon them the ministry. Their own birth, and the appointments their King gave them, so soon as their age permitted, made them able to exert an influence that told upon the rude and unenlightened clergy around. It had been almost a mission of conversion, to awaken a spirit of Christianity in the country, that had so long been a prey to anarchy. The King's declaration, 'I will make the key keep the castle, and the bracken- bush keep the cow, though I live the life of a dog to bring it about,' had been the moving spring of their lives. James had fought hour by hour with the foul habits of lawlessness, savagery, and violence, that had hitherto been absolutely unchecked; and while he strove with the sword of justice, the two young priests worked within the Word of truth, to implant some sense of conscience in the neglected people.

It had been a life of constant exertion, but full of hope and cheerfulness. Amid that rude country, James's own home was always a bright spot of peace, sunshine, and refinement. With his beloved queen, and their fair little brood of children, the King cast aside his cares, and was all, and more than all, he had been as the ornament of Henry's Court. There all that was sweet, innocent, and beautiful was to be found; and there Malcolm, his royal kinsman's confidant, counsellor, and chaplain, was always welcome as one of the home circle and family, till he broke away from such delights to labour in his task of reviving religion in the land. A little band of men were gathering round, clergy awakening from their sloth or worldliness, young nobles who began to see what chivalry meant, burghers who rejoiced in order; and hope and encouragement strengthened the hands of the three kinsmen.

But, alas! there were those who deemed James's justice on the savage prince and noble mere sacrilege on high blood, and who absolutely hated and loathed peace and order. Those thirteen years of cheerful progress ended in that murder so unspeakably horrible in all its circumstances, which almost merits the name of a martyrdom to right and justice. Malcolm so shuddered when he did but touch on it, and was so rent with agitation, that Esclairmonde perceived that when his beloved King had perished, he had indeed received the death-wound to his own fragile nature.

He had been actually in the Abbey of Perth; and had been one of those who lifted the mangled corpse from the vault, and sought in vain for a remnant of life, if but to grant the absolution, for which the victim had so piteously besought his murderers. No wonder that Fastern's E'en had whitened Malcolm's hair!

But when the assassins were captured, and Joan of Beaufort was resolved that their death should be as atrocious as their crime, it was Malcolm who strove to bend her to forgiveness. He bade her recollect King Henry, and how, when dealing with that cruel monster, the Castellane of Meaux, he had merely required death, without enhancing the agony; but Joan, in her rage and misery, had left the Englishwoman behind her, and was implacable. All that human cruelty could invent was to be the lot of Robert Graham and his associates; and whereas they had granted no priest to their victim, none should be granted to them.

And then it was that all Malcolm had learnt of the true spirit of the Christian triumphed—not only over the dark Keltic spirit of revenge, but over the shuddering of a tender and pitiful nature. Where no other priest durst venture, he went. Through all the frightful and protracted sufferings of Athol, Graham, Hall, and the rest, it was Malcolm Stewart who, never flinching, prayed with and for them; gathered their agonized sobs of confession, or strove to soften their hardness; spoke the words of absolution, and commended their departing souls.

When he awoke from the long unconsciousness and delirium that ensued upon the force he had put on himself, he found himself tended by his sister at Glenuskie. Patrick Drummond had transported him thither; finding that the angry Queen, in the madness of her vindictiveness, was well-nigh disposed to connect him with the treasonable designs of Athol and Graham. He slowly and partially recovered, but his influence was gone; the Queen would not brook the sound of his name, the little king was beyond his reach, James Kennedy was biding his time, and the country was returned to its state of misrule and violence, wherein an individual priest could do little: yet Malcolm would have held by his post, had not his health been so utterly shattered that he was incapable of the work he had hitherto done, as a confessor and a preacher. And therefore, as the state of his beloved King, 'sent to his account unhouselled, disappointed, unannealed,' hung heavy on his mind, he determined, so soon as he was in any degree convalescent, to set forth on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the object of so many dreams of King Henry; there to offer masses and prayers for the welfare of his departed prince, as well as of the unhappy murderers, and for the country in its distracted condition.

And there, at the Holy Sepulchre, had Malcolm, in the fervour of his heart, offered the greatest treasure he possessed—nay, the only one that he still really cared for—namely his betrothal ring, which Esclairmonde had worn for so long and had returned to him. As a priest, he had deemed that it was not unlawful for him to retain the memorial of the link that had bound him to her who had been the light that led him to the true Light beyond; but as youth passed away, as devotion burned brighter, as the experiences of those years became more dream-like, and the horror, grief, and misery of his King's death had been assuaged only by the steadier contemplation of the Light of Eternity, he had felt that this last pledge of his once lower aims and hopes ought to be resigned; and that if it cost him a pang, it was well that it should be so, to render the offering a sacrifice. So the ring that had once been Esclairmonde's protection was laid on the altar of the Holy Tomb.

There Malcolm had well-nigh died, under the influences of agitation, fatigue, and climate; but he had revived enough to set out on his return from his pilgrimage, and had made his way tardily and wearily, losing his attendants through death and desertion on the road; and passing from one religious house to another, as his strength and nearly exhausted means served him. Unable to find any vessel bound for Leith, he had taken ship for London; concealing his quality, lest, in the always probable contingency of a war, it might lead to his being made prisoner; and thus he had arrived, sick indeed unto death, but peaceful, rejoicing, and hopeful.

'Sister,' he said, 'the morn that I had offered my ring, I was feeble and faint; and when I knelt on before the altar in continued prayer—I know not whether I slept or whether it were a vision, but it was to me as though I were again on the river, and again the hymn of Bernard of Morlaix was sung around and above me, by the voice I never thought to hear again. I looked up, and behold it was I that was in the boat—my King was there no more. Nay, he stood on the shore, and his eyes beamed on me; while the ghastly wounds that I once strove in anguish to staunch shone out like a ruby cross on his breast—the hands, that were so sorely gashed, were to me as though marked by the impress of the Sacred Wounds. He spake not; but by his side stood King Henry, beautiful and spirit-like, and smiled on me, and seemed as though he pointed to the wounds, as he said, "Blessed is the king who died by his people's hand, for withstanding his people's sin! Blessed is every faint image of the true King!"

'Then methought they held out their arms to me; and I would have come to them on their shore of rest, but the river bore me away—and I looked up, to find I was as yet only in the earthly Jerusalem; but I watch for them every hour, to call me once and for ever.'



FOOTNOTES

{1} 'Hail, reverend brother. I come from Paris.'

{2} Student of the first year.

{3} Manners are lacking to the Northerners.

{4} Wretches.

{5} For supper.

{6} Telephus and Peleus, when both are poor and exiled, dismiss boasting and six-foot words.

{7} It is dispersed in a cloud.

THE END