or a helpless stranger!"

"Hands off, stroller!" said the Earl of March, thrusting the suppliant
glee maiden aside.

But the gentler prince paused. "It is true," he said, "I have brought
the vengeance of an unforgiving devil upon this helpless creature. O
Heaven! what a life, is mine, so fatal to all who approach me! What to
do in the hurry? She must not go to my apartments. And all my men are
such born reprobates. Ha! thou at mine elbow, honest Harry Smith? What
dost thou here?"

"There has been something of a fight, my lord," answered our
acquaintance the smith, "between the townsmen and the Southland loons
who ride with the Douglas; and we have swinged them as far as the abbey
gate."

"I am glad of it--I am glad of it. And you beat the knaves fairly?"

"Fairly, does your Highness ask?" said Henry. "Why, ay! We were stronger
in numbers, to be sure; but no men ride better armed than those who
follow the Bloody Heart. And so in a sense we beat them fairly; for, as
your Highness knows, it is the smith who makes the man at arms, and men
with good weapons are a match for great odds."

While they thus talked, the Earl of March, who had spoken with some one
near the palace gate, returned in anxious haste. "My Lord Duke!--my Lord
Duke! your father is recovered, and if you haste not speedily, my Lord
of Albany and the Douglas will have possession of his royal ear."

"And if my royal father is recovered," said the thoughtless Prince, "and
is holding, or about to hold, counsel with my gracious uncle and the
Earl of Douglas, it befits neither your lordship nor me to intrude till
we are summoned. So there is time for me to speak of my little business
with mine honest armourer here."

"Does your Highness take it so?" said the Earl, whose sanguine hopes of
a change of favour at court had been too hastily excited, and were as
speedily checked. "Then so let it be for George of Dunbar."

He glided away with a gloomy and displeased aspect; and thus out of the
two most powerful noblemen in Scotland, at a time when the aristocracy
so closely controlled the throne, the reckless heir apparent had made
two enemies--the one by scornful defiance and the other by careless
neglect. He heeded not the Earl of March's departure, however, or rather
he felt relieved from his importunity.

The Prince went on in indolent conversation with our armourer, whose
skill in his art had made him personally known to many of the great
lords about the