ry that he would relieve them from so
intolerable an enemy.

The King intended to spend the winter months with his queen in England,
and at once attacked the place in October, hoping to carry it by a _coup
de main_. He took the lower city, containing the market-place and
several large convents, with no great difficulty; but the upper city, on
a rising ground above the river, was strongly fortified, well victualled,
and bravely defended, and he found himself forced to invest it, and make
a regular siege, though at the expense of severe toil and much sickness
and suffering. Both his own prestige in France and the welfare of the
capital depended on his success, and he had therefore fixed himself
before Meaux to take it at whatever cost.

The greater part of the army were here encamped, together with the chief
nobles, March, Somerset, Salisbury, Warwick, and likewise the King of
Scots. James had for a time had the command of the army which besieged
and took Dreux while Henry was elsewhere engaged, but in general he acted
as a sort of volunteer aide-de-camp to his brother king, and Malcolm
Stewart of Glenuskie was always with him as his squire. A great change
had come over Malcolm in these last few months. His feeble, sickly
boyhood seemed to have been entirely cast off, and the warm genial summer
sun of France to have strengthened his frame and developed his powers. He
had shot up suddenly to a fair height, had almost lost his lameness, and
gained much more appearance of health and power of enduring fatigue. His
nerves had become less painfully sensitive, and when after his first
skirmish, during which he had kept close to King James, far too much
terrified to stir an inch from him, he had not only found himself
perfectly safe, but had been much praised for his valour, he had been so
much pleased with himself that he quite wished for another occasion of
displaying his bravery; and, what with use, and what with the increasing
spirit of pugnacity, he was as sincere as Ralf Percy in abusing the
French for never coming to a pitched battle. Perhaps, indeed, Malcolm
spoke even more eagerly than Ralf, in his own surprise and gratification
at finding himself no coward, and his fear lest Percy should detect that
he ever had been supposed to be such.

So far the King of Scots had succeeded in awakening martial fire in the
boy, but he found him less the companion in other matters than he had
intended. When at Paris, James w