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.

CHAPTER XIX: THE LION'S WRATH

It was the 24th of May, 1425, when in the vaulted hall of the Castle of
Stirling the nobles of Scotland were convened to try, as the peers of the
realm, men of rank--no less than Murdoch, Duke of Albany, his sons Walter
and Alexander, the Earl of Lennox, and twenty-two other nobles, most of
whom had been arraigned in the Parliament of Perth two months previously,
and had been shut up in different castles. Robert Stewart had escaped to
the Highlands; and Walter--who had neither been at the Coronation of
Scone, nor at the Parliament of Perth, nor indeed had ever bowed his
pride so as to present himself to the King at all--had been separately
arrested, and shut up for two months in the strong castle on the Bass
Rock.

The charge was termed treason and violence; and assuredly there had been
perpetual acts of spoil and barbarous infractions of the law by men who
deemed themsel