‘The poor scholar,’ now only existing in Ireland and Brittany—nay, we believe extinct there since the schoolmaster has become not abroad, but at home, in Government colleges—was to be found throughout the commonwealth of Europe in the Middle Ages. Young lads, in whom convent schools had developed a thirst for learning, could only gratify it by making their way to some university, where between begging, singing, teaching, receiving doles, earning rewards in encounters of wit and learning, doing menial services and using all manner of shifts, they contrived to live a hard life, half savage on the one side, highly intellectual upon the other. They would suck the marrow of one university, and then migrate to another; and the rank they had gained in the first was available in the second, so that it was no means uncommon for them to bring away degrees from half the universities in Europe, all of which formed one general system—all were like islands of one country, whose common language was queer Latin, and whose terms, manners, and customs were alike in all main points.

Scotland contributed many of her sons to this curious race of vagabond students, when she herself was without any university to satisfy the cravings of her thoughtful and intellectual people. ‘No country without a Scot or a flea’ was an uncomplimentary proverb due to the numerous young clerks, equally fierce for frays and for lectures, who flocked to the seats of learning on the Continent, and sometimes became naturalized there, sometimes came home again, to fight their way to the higher benefices of the Church, or to become councillors of state.

It was true that Malcolm was an Oxford scholar, or rather bachelor, and that Oxford and Cambridge were almost the only universities where Scots were not—their place being taken by multitudinous Irish; yet not only were all universities alike in essentials, but he had seen and heard enough of that at Paris to be able to personate a clerk from thence.

It was no small plunge for one hitherto watched, tended, and guarded as Malcolm had been, to set forth entirely alone; but as he had approached manhood, and strengthened in body, his spirit had gained much in courage, and the anxiety about his sister swallowed up all other considerations. Even while he entreated the prayers of the Abbess, he felt quite sure that he had those of Esclairmonde; and when he had hunted out of his mails the plain bachelor’s rabbit-skin hood and black gown—which, perhaps, was a little too fine in texture for the poor wanderer—and fastened on his back, with a leathern thong, a package containing a few books and a change of linen, his pale and intellectual face made him look so entirely the young clerk, that Patrick hardly believed it was Malcolm.

And when the roads parted, and Drummond and his escort had to turn towards Berwick, while Malcolm took the path to the monastery, it was the younger who was the stronger and more resolute of the two; for Patrick could neither reconcile himself to peril the boy, who had always been his anxious trust, nor to return to the King without him; and yet no one who loved Lilias could withhold him from his quest.

Malcolm did not immediately speed to the monastery on taking leave of Patrick. He stood first to watch the armour flashes gradually die away, and the little troop grow smaller to his eye, across the brown moor, till they were entirely out of sight, and he himself left alone. Then he knelt by a bush of gorse, told his beads, and earnestly entreated direction and aid for himself, and protection for his sister; and when the sun grew so low as to make it time for a wanderer to seek harbour, he stained and daggled his gown in the mire and water of a peat-moss, so as to destroy its Oxford gloss, took a book in his hand, and walked towards the monastery, reciting Latin verses in the sing-song tone then universally followed.

As he came among the fields, he saw that the peasants, and lay brethren who had been working among them, were returning, some from sowing, others from herding the cattle, which they drove before them to the byre within the protecting wall of the monastery.

A monk—with a weather-beaten face and athletic figure, much like a farmer’s of the present day—overtook him, and hailed him with ‘Benedicite, you there and welcome to your clerkship! Are you coming for supper and bed in the convent?’

Malcolm knew good-natured Brother Nicolas, and kept his hood well over his face after the first salutation; though he felt confident that Lord Malcolm could hardly be recognized in the begging scholar, as he made reply, ‘Salve, reverende frater. Venio de Luteti Parisiorum.’ {1}

‘Whisht with your Latin, laddie,’ said the brother. ‘Speak out, if you’ve a Scots tongue in your head, and have not left it in foreign parts.’

‘For bed and board, holy father, I shall be most thankful,’ replied Malcolm.

‘That’s more like it,’ said the brother, who acted as a kind of farming steward, and was a hearty, good-natured gossip. ‘An’ what’s the name of ye?’

He gave his real Christian name; and added that he came from Glenuskie, where the good Tutor of Glenuskie had been kind enough to notice him.

‘Ay,’ said Brother Nicolas, ‘he was a guid man to all towardly youths. He died in this house, more’s the pity.’

‘Yea, Sir—so I heard say,’ returned Malcolm. ‘He was a good friend to me!’ he added, to cover his heavy sigh. ‘And, Sir, how went it with the young laird and leddy?’

‘For the young laird—a feckless, ugsome, sickly wean he was, puir laddie—a knight cam by, an’ behoved to take him to the King. Nay, but if you’ve been at Parish—if that’s what ye mean with your Lutetia—ye’ll have seen him an’ the King.’

‘I saw the King,’ answered Malcolm; ‘but among the Englishry.’

‘A sorry sight enow!’ said the monk; ‘but he’ll soon find his Scots heart again; and here we’ve got rid of the English leaven from the house, and be all sound and leal Scots here.’

‘And the lady?’ Malcolm ventured to ask. ‘She had a winsome face.’

‘Ho! ho! what have young clerks to do wi’ winsome faces?’ laughed the Benedictine.

‘She was good to me,’ Malcolm could truly say.

‘They had her in St. Abbs yonder,’ said the monk.

‘Is she there?’ asked Malcolm. ‘I would pay my duty and thanks to her.’

‘Now—there I cannot say,’ replied Brother Nicolas. ‘My good Mother Abbess and our Prior are not the friends they were in Prior Akefield’s time; and there’s less coming and going between the houses. There was a noise that Lord Malcolm had been slain, and I did hear that, thereupon, she had been claimed as a ward of the Crown. But I cannot say. If ye gang to St. Abbs the morn, ye may hear if she be there—and at any rate get the dole.’

It was clear that the good brother knew no more, and Malcolm could only thank him for his condescension, and follow among the herdsmen into the well-known monastery court.

Here he availed himself of his avowed connection with Glenuskie, to beg to be shown good old Sir David Drummond’s grave. A flat gray stone in the porch was pointed out to him; and beside this he knelt, until the monks flocked in for prayers—which were but carelessly and hurriedly sung; and then followed supper. It was all so natural to him, that it was with an effort that he recalled that his place was not at the high table, as Lord Malcolm Stewart, but that Malcolm, the nameless begging scholar, must be trencher-fellow with the servants and lay brethren. He was the less concerned, that here there was less danger of recognition, and more freedom of conversation.

Things were evidently much altered. A novice was indeed, as usual, placed aloft in the refectory pulpit, to read aloud to the brethren during their repast, but no one seemed to think it needful to preserve the decorous silence that had been rigidly exacted during Prior Akefield’s time, and there was a continual buzz of conversation. Lent though it was, the fish was of the most esteemed kinds, and it was evident that, like the monks of Melrose, they ‘made gude kale.’ Few of the kindly old faces that Malcolm remembered were to be seen under their cowls. Prior Drax himself had much more the countenance of a moss-trooper than of a monk—mayhap he was then meditating that which he afterwards carried out successfully, i.e. the capture and appropriation of a whole instalment of King James’s ransom, on its way across the Border; and there was a rude recklessness and self-indulgence about the looks, voices, and manners of the brethren he had brought with him, such as made Malcolm feel that if he had had his wish, and remained at Coldingham, he should soon have found it no haven of peace.

The lay-brothers and old servants were fixtures, but the old faithful and devout ones looked forlorn and unhappy and there had been a great importation of the ruffianly men-at-arms, whom the more pugnacious ecclesiastics, as well as nobles, of Scotland, were apt to maintain. Guards there had been in old times, but kept under strict discipline; whereas, in the rude conduct of these men, there was no sign that they knew themselves to be in a religious house. Malcolm, keeping aloof from these as much as might be, gave such an account of himself as was most consistent with truth, since it was necessary to account for his returning so young from his studies. He had, he said, been told that there was an inheritance fallen due to him, and that the kinsman, in whose charge his sister had been left, was dead; and he had come home to seek her out, and inquire into the matter of his heirship.

Rude jokes, from some of the new denizens of the monastery, were spent on the improbability of his finding sister or lands; if it were in the Barony of Glenuskie, the House of Albany had taken the administration of that into their own hands.

‘Nay—but,’ said Malcolm, ‘could I but see my young Lady Lilias, she might make suit for me.’

The gray-headed lay-brother, to whom he addressed himself, replied that it was little the Lady Lilias could do, but directed him to St. Abbs to find her; whereat one of the men-at-arms burst out laughing, and crying, ‘That’s a’ that ye ken, auld Davie! As though the Master of Albany would let a bonnie lassie ware hersel’ and her tocher on stone walls and dour old nuns.’

‘Has she wedded the Master of Albany, then?’ asked Malcolm, concealing his anxiety as best he might.

‘That’s as he pleases; and by my troth he took pains enow to get her!’

‘What pains?’

‘Why, once she slipped out of his very fingers; that time that he had laid hands on her, and the hirpling doited brother of hers cam down with a strange knight, put her into St. Abbs, and made off for England—so they said. Some of the rogues would have it ’twas St. Andrew in bodily shape, and that he tirled the young laird, as was only fit for a saint, aff to heaven wi’ him; for he was no more seen in these parts.’

‘Nay, that couldna be,’ put in another soldier. ‘Sandy M’Kay took his aith that he was in the English camp—more shame till him—an’ was stickit dead for meddling between King Harry’s brother and his luve. It sorted him weel, I say.’

‘Aweel!’ continued the first; ‘gane is he, and sma’ loss wi’ him! An’ yon old beldame over at St. Abbs, she kens weel how to keep a lass wi’ a tocher—so what does the Master but sends a letter ower to our Prior, bidding him send two trusty brethren, as though from the King, to conduct her to Whitby?’

‘Ha!’ said Malcolm; ‘but that’s ower the Border.’

‘Even so; but the Glenuskies are all English at heart, and it sicker trained away the silly lassie.’

‘And then?’—the other man-at-arms laughed.

‘Why, at the first hostelry, ye can guess what sort of nuns were ready to meet her! I promise ye she skirled, and ca’ed Heaven and earth to help; but Brother Simon and Brother Ringan gave their word they’d see nae ill dune to her, and she rade with them on each side of her, and us tall fellows behind and before, till we cam to Doune.’

‘And what became of her, the poor lassie, then?’ inquired Malcolm, steadying his voice with much effort.

‘Ye maun ask the Master that,’ said the soldier. ‘I ken nae mair; I was sent on anither little errand of the Earl of Fife into the Highlands, and only cam back hither a week syne, to watch the Border.’

‘Had it been St. Andrew that saved her before, he wad hae come again,’ pondered the lay-brother. ‘He’d hardly hae given her up.’

‘Weel, I heard the lassie cry on the Master to mind the aith he had made the former time; an’ though he tried to laugh her to scorn, his eyes grew wild, and there were some that tell’d me they lookit to see that glittering awsome knight among them again! My certie, they maun hae been feared enow the time he did come.’

Malcolm had now had his fears and suspicions so far confirmed, that he perceived what his course should next be. Strange to say, in spite of the horror of knowing his sister to have been a whole year in Walter Stewart’s power, he was neither hopeless nor disheartened. Lilias seemed to have kept her persecutor at bay once, and she might have done so again—if only by the appeal to the mysterious relic, on which his oath to abstain from violence had been sworn. And confidence in Esclairmonde’s prayers continued to buoy him up, as he recited his own, and formed his designs for ascertaining whether she were to be found at Doune—either as wife, or as captive, to Walter, Earl of Fife and heir of Albany.

So soon as the doors of Coldingham Priory were opened, he was on his way northward. It was a sore and trying journey, in the bitter March weather, for one so little used to hardship. He did not fail in obtaining shelter or food; his garb was everywhere a passport; but he grew weary and footsore, and his anxiety greatly increased when he found that fatigue was bringing back the lameness, which greatly enhanced the likelihood of his being recognized. Kind monks, and friendly gude-wives, hospitably persuaded the worn student to remain and rest, till his blistered feet were whole; but he pressed on whenever he found it possible to travel, and after the first week found his progress less tardy and painful.

Resting at Edinburgh for Passion-tide and Easter Day, he found that the Regent Albany himself, with all his family, were at Doune, and he accordingly made his way thither; rejoicing that he had had some little time to perfect himself in his part, before rehearsing it to the persons most likely to detect his disguise.

Along the banks and braes of bonny Doune he slowly moved, with weary limbs; looking up to the huge pile of the majestic castle in sickening of heart at the doubt that was about to become a certainty, and that involved the happiness or the absolute misery of his sister’s life. Nay, he would almost have preferred to find that she had perished in her resistance, rather than have become wife to such a man as Walter Stewart.

The Duke of Albany, as representing majesty, kept up all the state that Scottish majesty was capable of, in its impoverished irregular state. Hosts of rough lawless warriors, men-at-arms, squires and knights, lived at free quarters, in a sort of rude plenty, in and about the Castle; eating and drinking at the Regent’s expense, sleeping where they could, in hall or stable, and for clothing and armour trusting to ‘spulzie’; always ready for violence, without much caring on whom exercised—otherwise hunting, or lounging, or swelling their master’s disorderly train.

This retinue was almost at its largest at this time, being swelled by the following of the two younger sons of Murdoch, Robert and Alexander; and the courts of the Castle were filled with rude, savage-looking men, some few grooming horses, others with nothing to do but to shout forth their jeers at the pale, black-gowned student, who timidly limped into their lair.

Timidly—yes; for the awful chances heavily oppressed him; and the horrible scurrility and savagery that greeted him on all sides made his heart faint at the thought of his Lily in this cage of foul animals. He did not fear for himself, and never paused until a shouting circle of idle ruffians set themselves full in his way, to badger and bait the poor scholar with taunts and insults—hemming him in, bawling out ribald mirth, as a pack of hounds fall on some stray dog, or, as Malcolm thought, in a moment half of sick horror, half of resolute resignation, like wild cattle—fat bulls of Bashan closing in on every side. So horrible a moment of distress he had never known; but suddenly, as he stood summoning all his strength, panting with dismay, inwardly praying, and trying to close his ears and commend himself to One who knew what mockery is, there was an opening of the crowd, a youth darted down among them, with a loud cry of ‘Shame! Out on you! A poor scholar!’ and taking Malcolm’s hand, led him forward; while a laugh of mockery rose in the distance—‘Like to like.’

‘Ay, my friend and brother, I am Baccalaureus, even as you are,’ eagerly said the young gentleman, in whom Malcolm, somewhat to his alarm, recognized his cousin, James Kennedy, the King’s nephew, a real Parisian ‘bejanus,’ or bec jaune, {2} when they last had met in the HÔtel de St. Pol; and thus not only qualified to confute and expose him, should he show any ignorance of details, but also much more likely to know him than those who had not seen him for many months before he had left Scotland.

But James Kennedy asked no questions, only said kindly, in the Latin that was always spoken in the University, ‘Pray pardon us! Mores Hyperboreis desunt. {3} The Regent would be grieved, if he knew how these scelerati {4} have sorted you. Come, rest and wash—it will soon be supper-time.’

He took Malcolm to an inner court, filled for him a cup of ale, for his immediate refreshment, and led him to a spout of clear water, in the side of the rock on which the Castle stood; where a stone basin afforded the only facilities for washing that the greater part of the inhabitants of the Castle expected, and, in effect, more than they commonly used. Malcolm, however, was heartily glad of the refreshment of removing the dust from his weary face and feet—and heartily thanked his protector, in the same dog-Latin. Kennedy waited for him, and as a great bell began to ring, said ‘Pro cÆnÂ,’ {5} and conducted him towards the great hall while Malcolm felt much impelled to make himself known, but was conscious that he had not so comported himself towards his cousin at Paris as to deserve much favour from him.

A high table was spread in the hall, with the usual appliances befitting princes and nobles. The other tables, below the dais, were of the rudest description, and stained with accumulations of grease and ale; and no wonder, since trenchers were not, and each man hacked a gobbet for himself from the huge pieces of beef carried round on spits—nor would the guests have had any objection, during a campaign, to cook the meat in the fashion described by Froissart, between themselves and the saddle. These were the squirearchy; Malcolm’s late persecutors did not aspire to the benches around these boards, or only at second hand, and for the most part had no seat but the unclean straw and rushes that strewed the floor.

As James Kennedy entered the hall with Malcolm, there came from another door, marshalled by the seneschal in full feudal state, the Regent Duke of Albany himself, his wife, a daughter or two, two sons—and Malcolm saw, with beating heart, Lilias herself, pale worn, sorrowful-looking, grievously altered, but still his own Lily. Others followed, chiefly knights and attendants, but Malcolm saw no one but Lily. She took her place dejectedly, and never raised her eyes towards him, even when, on the Regent’s question, ‘What have ye there, Jamie?’ Kennedy stood forth and answered that it was a scholar, a student, for whom he asked the hospitality of his kinsman.

‘He is welcome,’ said the Regent, a man of easy good-nature, whose chief misfortune was, that being of weak nature, he came between a wicked father and wickeder sons. He was a handsome man, with much of the stately appearance of King James himself, and the same complexion; but it was that sort of likeness which was almost provoking, by seeming to detract from the majesty of the lineaments themselves, as seen in him who alone knew how to make them a mask for a great soul. His two sons, Robert and Alexander, laughed as they saw Kennedy’s companion, and called out, ‘So that’s the brotherhood of learning, is it, Jamie?—forgathering with any beggar in the street!’

‘Yea,’ said Kennedy, nothing daunted, ‘and finding him much better mannered than you!’

‘Ay!’ sighed Murdoch, feebly; ‘when I grew up, it was at the Castles of Perth and Doune that we looked for the best manners. Now—’

‘We leave them to the lick-platters that have to live by them,’ said Alexander, rudely.

Kennedy, meanwhile, gave the young scholar in charge to a gray-headed retainer, who seemed one of the few who had any remains of good-breeding; and then offered to say Grace—he being the nearest approach to an ecclesiastic present—as the chaplain was gone to an Easter festivity at his Abbey. Malcolm thus obtained a seat at the second table, and a tolerable share of supper; but he could hardly eat, from intense anxiety, and scarcely knew whether to be glad or sorry that he was out of sight of Lily.

By and by, a moment’s lull of the universal din enabled Malcolm to hear the Regent saying, ‘Verily, there is a look of gentle nurture about the lad. Look you, James, when the tables are drawn, you shall hold a disputation with him. It will be sport to hear how you chop logic at your Universities yonder.’

Malcolm’s spirit sank. Such disputations were perfectly ordinary work at both Oxford and Paris, and, usually, he was quite capable of sustaining his part in them; but his heart was so full, his mind so anxious, his condition so dangerous, that he felt as if he could by no means rally that alertness of argument, and readiness of quotation, that were requisite even in the merest tyro. However, he made a great effort. He secretly invoked the Light of Wisdom; tried to think himself back into the aisles of St. Mary’s Church, and to call up the key-notes of some of the stock arguments; hoping that, if the selection of the subject were left to Kennedy, he would hit on one of those most familiar at Oxford.

The supper was ended, the tables were removed, and the challenge took place. Duke Murdoch, leaning back in his high chair by the peat-fire, while the ladies sat round at their spinning, called for the two young clerks to begin their tourney of words. They stood opposite one another, on the step of the dais; and Kennedy, as host and challenger, assigned to his opponent the choice of a subject, when Malcolm, brightening, proposed one that he had so often heard and practised on, as to have the arguments at his fingers’ ends; namely, that the real consists only in that which is substantial to the senses, and which we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch.

Kennedy’s shrewd gray eye glanced at him in a manner that startled him, as he made reply, ‘Fellow-alumnus, you speak as Oxford scholars speak; but I rede ye well that the real is not that which is grossly tangible to the corporeal sense, but the idea that is conceived within the immortal intelligence.’

The argument was carried on in the vernacular, but there was an unlimited license of quotation from authors of all kinds, classics, Fathers, and schoolmen. It was like a game at chess, in which the first moves were always so much alike, that they might have been made by automatons; and Malcolm was repeating reply and counter-reply, almost by rote, when a citation brought in by Kennedy again startled him.

‘Outward things,’ said James, ‘are the mere mark; for have we not heard how

“Telephus et Peleus, quum pauper et exsul uterque,
Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba”?’ {6}

Was this to prove that he recognized a wandering prince in his opponent? thought Malcolm; but, much on his guard, he made answer, as usual, in his native tongue. ‘That which is not touched and held is but a vain and fleeting shadow—“solvitur in nube.” {7}

‘Negatur, it is denied!’ said Kennedy, fixing his eyes full upon him. ‘The Speculum of the Soul, which is immortal, retains the image even while the bodily presence is far away. Wherefore else was it that Ulysses sat as a beggar by his paternal hearth, or that Cadmus wandered to seek his sister?’

This was anything but the regular illustration—the argument was far too directly ad hominem—and Malcolm hesitated for a moment, ere framing his reply. ‘If the image had satisfied the craving of their hearts, they had never wandered, nor endangered themselves.’

‘Nor,’ said Kennedy, ‘endeared themselves to all who love the leal and the brave, and count these indeed as verities for which to live.’

From the manner in which these words were spoken, Malcolm had no further doubt either that Kennedy knew him, or that he meant to assist him; and the discussion thenceforth proceeded without further departures from the regular style, and was sustained with considerable spirit, till the Regent grew weary of it, and bed-time approached, when Kennedy announced his intention of taking his fellow-student to share his chamber; and, as this did not appear at all an unnatural proposal, in the crowded Castle, Malcolm followed him up various winding stairs into a small circular chamber, with a loop-hole window, within one of the flanking towers.

Carefully closing the heavy door, Kennedy held out his hands. ‘Fair cousin,’ he said, ‘this is bravely done of you.’

‘Will it save my sister?’ asked Malcolm, anxiously.

‘It should,’ said his kinsman; ‘but how can it be? Whatever is done, must be ere Walter Stewart returns.’

‘Tell me all! I know nothing—save that she was cruelly lured from St. Abbs.’

‘I know little more,’ said Kennedy. ‘It was on a false report of your death, and Walter had well-nigh obtained a forcible marriage; when her resistance and cries to Heaven daunted the monk who was to have performed the rite, so that he, in a sort, became her protector. When she was brought here, Walter swore he would bend her to his will; shut her up in the old keep, and kept her there, scantily fed, and a close prisoner, while he went forth on one of his forays. The Regent coming here meantime, found the poor maiden in her captivity, and freed her so far that she lives, to all appearance, as becomes his kinswoman; but the Duchess is cruelly strict with her, being resolved, as she says, to take down her pride.’

‘They must know that I live,’ said Malcolm.

‘They do; but Walter is none the less resolved not to be balked. Things came to a wild pass a few weeks syne. The Regent had never dared tell him how far matters had gone for bringing back the King, when one day Walter came in, clad for hawking; and, in his rudest manner, demanded the falcon that was wont to sit on his father’s wrist, and that had never been taken out by any other. The Regent refused to part with the bird, as he had oft done before; whereupon his son, in his fury, snatched her from his wrist, and wrung her head off before all our eyes; then turning fiercely on your poor sister, told her that “yon gled should be a token to her, of how they fared who withheld themselves from him.” Then rose the Duke, trembling within rage; “Ay, Wat,” said he, “ye hae been owermuch for me. We will soon have ane at home that will ken how to guide ye.” Walter looked at him insolently, and muttered, “I’ve heard of this before! They that wad have a master, may live under a master—but I’m not ane of them;” and then, turning upon Lady Lilias, he pointed to the dead hawk, and told her that, unless she yielded to him with a good grace, that bird showed her what she might expect, long ere the King or her brother were across the border.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘In Fife, striving to get a force together to hinder the King’s return. He’ll not do that; men are too weary of misrule to join him against King James; but he is like, any day, to come back with reivers enough to terrify his father, and get your sister into his hands—indeed, his mother is ready to give her up to him whenever he asks. He has sworn to have her now, were it merely to vex the King and you, and show that he is to be daunted neither by man, heaven, nor hell.’

‘And he may come?’

‘Any day or any night,’ said James. ‘Since he went I have striven, in vain, to devise some escape for your sister; but Heaven has surely sent you to hinder so foul a wrong! Yet, if you went to Glenuskie and raised your vassals—’

‘It would be loss of time,’ said Malcolm; ‘and this matter may not be put to the doubtful issue of a fray between my men and his villains. Out of this place must she go at once. But, alas! how win to the speech of her?’

‘That can I do,’ said Kennedy. ‘For a few brief moments, each day, have I spoken to her in the chapel. Nay, I had left this place before now, had she not prayed me to remain as her only friend.’

‘Heaven must requite you, Cousin James,’ said Malcolm, warmly. ‘I deserved not this of you.’

‘All that I desire,’ said Kennedy, ‘is to see this land of ours cease to be full of darkness and cruel habitations. Malcolm, you know the King better than I; may we not trust that he will come as a redresser of wrongs?’

‘Know you not his pledge to himself?—“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!”’

‘God strengthen his hand,’ said Kennedy, with tears in his eyes; ‘and bring better days to our poor land. Cousin, has not your heart burnt within you, to be doing somewhat to bring these countrymen of ours to better mind?’

‘I have grieved,’ said Malcolm. ‘The sight has been the woe and horror of my whole life; and either it is worse now than when I went away, or I see it clearer.’

‘It is both,’ said Kennedy; ‘and, Malcolm, it is borne in on me that we, who have seen better things, have a heavy charge! The King may punish marauders, and enforce peace; but it will be but the rule of the strong hand, unless men’s hearts be moved! Our clergy—they bear the office of priests—but their fierceness and their ignorance would scarce be believed in France or England; and how should it be otherwise, with no schools at home save the abbeys—and the abbeys almost all fortresses held by fierce noblemen’s sons?’

Malcolm would much rather have discussed the means of rescuing his sister, but James Kennedy’s heart was full of a youth’s ardent plans for the re-awakening of religion in his country, chiefly through the improved education of the clergy, and it was not easy to bring his discourse to a close.

‘You—you were to wed a great Flemish heiress?’ he said. ‘You will do your part, Cousin, in the founding of a University—such as has changed ourselves so greatly.’

Malcolm smiled. ‘My only bride is learning,’ he said; ‘my other betrothal is but in name, for the safety of the lady.’

‘Then,’ cried Kennedy joyfully, ‘you will give yourself. Learning and culture turned to God’s service, for this poor country’s sake, in one of birth like you, may change her indeed.’

Was this the reading of Esclairmonde’s riddle? suddenly thought Malcolm. Was the true search for heavenly Light, then, to consist in holding up to his countrymen the lamp he was kindling for himself? Must true wisdom consist in treasuring knowledge, not for his own honour among learned men, or the delectation of his own mind, but to scatter it among these rude northern souls? Must the vision of learned research and scholarly calm vanish, as cloistral peace, and chivalrous love and glory, had vanished before? and was the lot of a hard-working secular priest that which called him?