eyond the walls. The
Queen's health had, however, been greatly shaken, the cold blasts of the
north wind withered her up, and she died in the beginning of the year
1445.

The desolateness of the poor girls had perhaps been greater than their
grief. Poor Joanna had been exacting and tyrannical, and with no female
attendants but the old, worn-out English nurse, had made them do her
all sorts of services, which were requited with scoldings and grumblings
instead of the loving thanks which ought to have made them offices of
affection as well as duty; while the poor little boys would indeed have
fared ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve years old, had
not been one of those girls who are endowed from the first with tender,
motherly instincts.

Beyond providing that there was a supply of some sort of food, and
that they were confined within the walls of the Castle, Hepburn did not
trouble his head about his prisoners, and for many weeks they had
no intercourse with any one save Archie Scott, an old groom of their
mother's; Ankaret, nurse to baby Andrew; and the seneschal and his wife,
both Hepburns.

Eleanor and Jean, who had been eight and seven years old at the time
of the terrible catastrophe which had changed all their lives, had been
well taught under their father's influence; and the former, who had
inherited much of his talent and poetical nature, had availed herself of
every scanty opportunity of feeding her imagination by book or ballad,
story-teller or minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies
that she had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that
of her sisters, in the many long and dreary hours that they had to pass,
unbrightened save by the inextinguishable buoyancy of young creatures
together. When their mother was dying, Hepburn could not help for very
shame admitting a priest to her bedside, and allowing the clergy to
perform her obsequies in full form. This had led to a more complete
perception of the condition of the poor Princesses, just at the
time when the two worst tyrants over the young King, Crichton and
Livingstone, had fallen out, and he had been able to put himself under
the guidance of his first cousin, James Kennedy, Bishop of St.
Andrews and now Chancellor of Scotland, one of the wisest, best, and
truest-hearted men in Scotland, and imbued with the spirit of the late
King.

By his management Hepburn was induced to make submission and deliver up
Dunbar