Castle to the King with all its captives, and the meeting between
the brother and sisters was full of extreme delight on both sides. They
had been together very little since their father's death, only meeting
enough to make them long for more opportunities; and the boy at fifteen
years old was beginning to weary after the home feeling of rest among
kindred, and was so happy amidst his sisters that no attempt at breaking
up the party at Dunbar had yet been made, as its situation made it a
convenient abode for the Court. Though he had never had such advantages
of education as, strangely enough, captivity had afforded to his father,
he had not been untaught, and his rapid, eager, intelligent mind had
caught at all opportunities afforded by those palace monasteries of
Scotland in which he had stayed for various periods of his vexed and
stormy minority. Good Bishop Kennedy, with whom he had now spent many
months, had studied at Paris and had passed four years at Rome, so as
to be well able both to enlarge and stimulate his notions. In Eleanor he
had found a companion delighted to share his studies, and full likewise
of original fancy and of that vein of poetry almost peculiar to Scottish
women; and Jean was equally charming for all the sports in which she
could take part, while the little ones, whom, to his credit be it
spoken, he always treated as brothers, were pleasant playthings.

His presence, with all that it involved, had made a most happy change
in the maidens' lives; and yet there was still great dreariness, much
restraint in the presence of constant precaution against violence, much
rudeness and barbarism in the surroundings, absolute poverty in the
plenishing, a lack of all beauty save in the wild and rugged face of
northern nature, and it was hardly to be wondered at that young
people, inheritors of the cultivated instincts of James I. and of the
Plantagenets, should yearn for something beyond, especially for that
sunny southern land which report and youthful imagination made them
believe an ideal world of peace, of poetry, and of chivalry, and the
loving elder sister who seemed to them a part of that golden age when
their noble and tender-hearted father was among them.

The boy's foot was on the turret-stairs, and he was out on the
battlements--a tall lad for his age, of the same colouring as Eleanor,
and very handsome, except for the blemish of a dark-red mark upon one
cheek.

'How now, wee Andie?' he exclai