d at some
distance conversing with the Scottish Nigel, 'so please you, let us have
the horses;' and as the gentleman hastened to give the summons, he said,
'We shall make good way now. We shall come on Watling Street. Ha,
Jamie, when shall we prove ourselves better men than a pack of Pagan
Romans, by having a set of roads fit for man or beast, of our own making
instead of theirs half decayed? Look where I will, in England or France,
their roads are the same in build--firm as the world itself, straight as
arrows. An army is off one's mind when once one gets on a Roman way.
I'll learn the trick, and have them from Edinburgh to Bordeaux ere ten
years are out; and then, what with traffic and converse with the world,
and ready justice, neither Highland men minor Gascons will have leisure
or taste for robbery.'

'Perhaps Gascons and Scots will have a voice in the matter,' said James,
a little stiffly; and the horses being by this time brought, Sir Harry
mounted, and keeping his horse near that of young Malcolm, to whom he had
evidently taken a fancy, he began to talk to him in so friendly and
winning a manner, that he easily drew from the youth the whole history of
his acquaintance with Sir James Stewart, of the rescue of his sister, and
the promise to conduct him to the captive King of Scots, as the only
means of saving him from his rapacious kindred.

'Poor lad!' said Harry, gravely.

'Do you know King James, Sir?' asked Malcolm, timidly.

'Know him?' said Harry, turning round to scan the boy with his merry blue
eye. 'I know him--yes; that as far as a poor Welsh knight can know his
Grace of Scotland.'

'And, Sir, will he be good lord to me?'

'Eh! that's as you may take him. I would not be one of yonder Scots
under his hands!'

'Has he learned to hate his own countrymen?' asked Malcolm, in an awe-
stricken voice.

'Hate? I trow he has little to love them for. He is a good fellow
enough, my young lord, when left to himself; but best beware. Lions in a
cage have strange tempers.'

A courier rode up at the moment, and presented some letters, which Sir
Harry at once opened and read, beckoning his brother and Sir James to his
side, while Malcolm rode on in their wake, in a state of dismay and
bewilderment. Nigel and Lord Marmion were together at so great an
interval that he could not fall back on them, nor learn from them who
these brothers were. And there was something in the ironical suppressed
pity with