rge me with unless with the greatest repugnance;
and that I never saw men have strife together to the effusion of blood,
but I could have wished to appease it with the shedding of my own."

"But, my gracious lord," said the prior, "it seems that, if we follow
not some such policy as this of my Lord of Albany, we must have recourse
to that of the Douglas; and, at the risk of the dubious event of battle,
and with the certainty of losing many excellent subjects, do, by means
of the Lowland swords, that which these wild mountaineers will otherwise
perform with their own hand. What says my Lord of Douglas to the policy
of his Grace of Albany?"

"Douglas," said the haughty lord, "never counselled that to be done by
policy which might be attained by open force. He remains by his opinion,
and is willing to march at the head of his own followers, with those
of the barons of Perth shire and the Carse, and either bring these
Highlanders to reason or subjection, or leave the body of a Douglas
among their savage wildernesses."

"It is nobly spoken, my Lord of Douglas," said Albany; "and well might
the King rely upon thy undaunted heart and the courage of thy resolute
followers. But see you not how soon you may be called elsewhere, where
your presence and services are altogether indispensable to Scotland and
her monarch? Marked you not the gloomy tone in which the fiery March
limited his allegiance and faith to our sovereign here present to that
space for which he was to remain King Robert's vassal? And did not you
yourself suspect that he was plotting a transference of his allegiance
to England? Other chiefs, of subordinate power and inferior fame, may do
battle with the Highlanders; but if Dunbar admit the Percies and their
Englishmen into our frontiers, who will drive them back if the Douglas
be elsewhere?"

"My sword," answered Douglas, "is equally at the service of his Majesty
on the frontier or in the deepest recesses of the Highlands. I have seen
the backs of the proud Percy and George of Dunbar ere now, and I may
see them again. And, if it is the King's pleasure I should take measures
against this probable conjunction of stranger and traitor, I admit that,
rather than trust to an inferior or feebler hand the important task of
settling the Highlands, I would be disposed to give my opinion in favour
of the policy of my Lord of Albany, and suffer those savages to carve
each other's limbs, without giving barons and knights the