hat always pass between the outposts of
civilized armies, made much attempt to have any communication with his
cousin, for though his own abnegation of his rights had never been
permitted by his guardian, or reckoned on by his sister or her lover,
still he had been so much in earnest about it himself, as, while
regarding it as a childish folly, to feel ill at ease in the remembrance,
and, though defiant, willing to avoid all that could recall it.

Meantime he, with his king, was lodged in a large old convent, as part of
the immediate following of King Henry. Others of the princes and nobles
were quartered in the market hall and lower town, but great part of thine
troops were in tents, and in a state of much discomfort, owing to the
overflowings of the Marne. Fighting was the least of their dangers,
though their skirmishes were often fought ankle-deep in mud and mire;
fever and ague were among them, and many a sick man was sent away to
recover or die at Paris. The long dark evenings were a new trial to men
used to summer campaigning, and nothing but Henry's wonderful personal
influence and perpetual vigilance kept up discipline. At any hour of the
day or night, at any place in the camp, the King might be at hand, with a
cheery word of sympathy or encouragement, or with the most unflinching
sternness towards any disobedience or debauchery--ever a presence to be
either loved or dreaded. An engineer in advance of his time, he was
persuaded that much of the discomfort might be remedied by trenching the
ground around the camp; but this measure proved wonderfully distasteful
to the soldiery. How hard they laboured in the direct siege operations
they cared not, but to be set to drain French fields seemed to them
absurd and unreasonable, and the work would not have proceeded at all
without constant superintendence from one of the chiefs of the army,
since the ordinary knights and squires were as obstinately prejudiced as
were the men.

Thus it was that, on a cold sleety December day, James of Scotland rode
along the meadows, splashing through thin ice into muddy water, and
attended by his small personal suite, excepting Sir Nigel Baird, who was
gone on a special commission to Paris. Both he and Malcolm were plainly
and lightly armed, and wore long blue cloaks with the St. Andrew's cross
on the shoulder, steel caps without visors, and the King's merely
distinguished by a thread-hike circlet of gold. They had breastplates,