For Malcolm to speak with his sister was well-nigh an impossibility. Had he been detected, he would have been immediately treated as a spy, and the suspicion thus excited would have been a dangerous preparation for the King as well as for himself; nor was there any pretext for giving the wandering scholar an interview with her.

But harsh and strict as was the Duchess of Albany—a tall, raw-boned, red-haired woman, daughter of the fierce old Earl of Lennox—and resolved as she was to bend Lilias by persecution to accept her son, she could not debar a young gentleman of the royal kindred, like James Kennedy, from entering the apartment where the ladies of the family sat with their needles; and the Regent, half from pity, half from shame, had refused to permit Lilias Stewart’s being treated as a mere captive.

Thus Malcolm remained in Kennedy’s room in much anxiety, while his cousin went forth to do his best in his cause, and after some hours returned to him with the tidings that he had succeeded in letting Lily know that he was in the Castle. Standing over her while she bent over her embroidery, and thus concealing her trembling agitation, he had found it possible to whisper in her ears the tidings of her brother having come to save her, and of hearing her insist that Malcolm, ‘wee Malcolm, must run no peril, but that she would do and dare everything—nay, would prefer death itself to Walter Stewart.’

‘Have you any device in this matter?’ demanded James Kennedy, when he had thus spoken.

‘Have you your college gown here?’ inquired Malcolm.

‘I have, in yon kist,’ said Kennedy. ‘Would you disguise her therein? You and she are nearly of a height.’

‘Ay,’ said Malcolm. ‘The plot I thought on is this—the worst is that the risk rests with you.’

‘That is naught, less than naught,’ said Kennedy. ‘I had risked myself ten times over had I seen any hope for her in so doing.’

Malcolm then explained his plan, namely, that if Lilias could have Kennedy’s gown conveyed to her, she should array herself therein, and be conducted out of the castle by her cousin by one gate, he himself in secular garb going by another, and joining at some place of meeting, whence, as a pair of brothers, Malcolm and she might gain the English border.

James Kennedy considered, and then added that he could improve on the plan. He had long intended leaving Doune for his brother’s castle, but only tarried in case he could do anything for Lilias. He would at supper publicly announce to the Regent his departure for the next day, and also say that he had detained his fellow-scholar to go within him. Then arranging for Malcolm’s exit in a secular dress among his escort, as one of the many unobserved loungers, Lilias should go with him in very early morning in the bachelor’s gown, which he would place in a corner of a dark passage, where she could find it. Then if Malcolm and she turned aside from his escort, as the pursuit as soon as her evasion was discovered would be immediately directed on himself, they would have the more time for escape.

It was a complicated plan, but there was this recommendation, that Malcolm need not lose sight of his sister. Clerk as he was, young Kennedy could not ride without an escort, and among his followers he could place Malcolm. Accordingly at supper he announced his desire to leave Doune at dawn next morning, and was, as a matter of course, courteously pressed to remain. Malcolm in the meantime eluded observation as much as possible while watching his sister, who, in spite of all her efforts, was pale and red by turns, never durst glance towards him, and trembled whenever any one went near him.

The ladies at length swept out of the hall, and Robert and Alexander called for more wine for a rere-supper to drink to James’s good journey; but Kennedy tore himself from their hospitable violence, and again he and Malcolm were alone, spending a night of anxiety and consultation.

Morning came; Malcolm arrayed himself in a somewhat worn dress of Kennedy’s, with the belt and dirk he had carried under his scholar’s garb now without, and a steel cap that his cousin had procured for him on his head. With a parcel in his arms of Kennedy’s gear, he might pass for a servant sent from home to meet him; and so soon as this disguise was complete, Kennedy opened the door. On the turret stair stood a hooded black figure, that started as the door opened.

Malcolm’s heart might well seem to leap to his lips, but both brother and sister felt the tension of nerve that caution required too much to give way for a moment.

Kennedy whispered, ‘Your license, fair Cousin,’ and passed on with the free step of lordly birth, while a few paces behind the seeming scholar humbly followed, and Malcolm, putting on his soldier’s tread and the careless free-and-easy bearing he had affected before Meaux, brought up the rear with Master Kennedy’s mails.

As they anticipated, the household was not troubling itself to rise to see the priest off. Not that this made the coast clear, for the floor of the hall was cumbered with snoring sleepers in all sorts of attitudes—nay, at the upper table, the flushed, debauched, though young and handsome, faces of Robert and Alexander Stewart might have been detected among those who lay snoring among the relics of their last night’s revel.

The old steward was, however, up and alert, ready to offer the stirrup-cup, and the horses were waiting in the court; but what they had by no means expected or desired was that Duke Murdoch himself, in his long furred gown, came slowly across the hall to bid his young kinsman Kennedy farewell.

‘Speed you well, my lad,’ he said kindly. ‘I ask ye not to tarry in what ye must deem a graceless household;’ and he looked sadly across at his two sons, boys in age, but seniors in excess. ‘I would we had mair lads like you. I fear me a heavy reckoning is coming.’

‘You have ever been good lord to all, Sir,’ said Kennedy, affectionately, for he really loved and pitied the soft-hearted Duke.

‘Too good, maybe,’ said Murdoch. ‘What! the scholar goes with you?’ and he fixed a look on Lily’s face that brought the colour deep into it under her hood.

‘Yes, Sir,’ answered Kennedy, respectfully. ‘Here, you Tam,’ indicating Malcolm, ‘take him behind you on the sumpter-horse.’

‘Fare ye weel, gentle scholar,’ said Murdoch, taking the hand that Lily was far from offering. ‘May ye win to your journey’s end safe and sound; and remember,’ he added, holding the fingers tight, and speaking under the hood, ‘if ye have been hardly served, ’twas to make ye the second lady in Scotland. Take care of her—him, young laddie,’ he added, turning on Malcolm: ‘’tis best so; and mind’ (he spoke in the same wheedling tone of self-excuse), ‘if ye tell the tale down south, nae ill hath been dune till her, and where could she have been mair fitly than beneath her kinsman’s roof? I’d not let her go, but that young blude is hot and ill to guide.’

An answer would have been hard to find; and it was well that he did not look for any. Indeed, Malcolm could not have spoken without being heard by the seneschal, and therefore could only bow, take his seat on the baggage-horse, and then feel his sister mounting behind him in an attitude less unfamiliar on occasion even to the high-born ladies of the fifteenth century than to those of our day. Four years it was since he had felt her touch, four years since she had sat behind him as they followed the King to Coldingham! His heart swelled with thankfulness as he passed under the gateway, and the arms that clung round his waist clasped him fervently; but neither ventured on a word, amid Kennedy’s escort, and they rode on a couple of miles in the same silence. Then Kennedy, pausing, said, ‘There lies your way, Brother. Tam, you may show the scholar the way to the Gray Friars’ Grange, bear them greetings frae me, and halt till ye hear from me. Fare ye well.’

Lilias trusted her voice to say, ‘Blessings on ye, Sir, for all ye have done for me,’ but Malcolm thought it wiser in his character of retainer to respond only by a bow.

Of course they understood that the direction Kennedy gave was the very one they were not to take, but they followed it till a tall bush of gorse hid them from the escort; and then Malcolm, grasping his sister’s hand, plunged down among the rowans, ferns, and hazels, that covered the steep bank of the river, and so soon as a footing was gained under shelter of a tall rock, threw his arms round her, almost sobbing in an under-tone, ‘My Lily, my tittie!—safe at last! Oh, God be thanked! I knew her prayers would be heard! Oh, would that Patrick were here!’ Then, as her face changed and quivered ready to weep, he cried, ‘Eh, what! art still deeming him dead?’

‘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 mÊlÉe 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.