was playing at ball with some of the village lads on the green,
when a party of horsemen was seen approaching.

At their head rode two men perhaps forty years old, while a lad of
some eighteen years of age rode beside them. In one of the elder
men Archie recognized Sir John Kerr. The lad beside him was his
son Allan. The other leader was Sir John Hazelrig, governor of
Lanark; behind them rode a troop of armed men, twenty in number.
Some of the lads would have ceased from their play; but Archie
exclaimed:

"Heed them not; make as if you did not notice them. You need not
be in such a hurry to vail your bonnets to the Kerr."

"Look at the young dogs," Sir John Kerr said to his companion.
"They know that their chief is passing, and yet they pretend that
they see us not."

"It would do them good," his son exclaimed, "did you give your
troopers orders to tie them all up and give them a taste of their
stirrup leathers."

"It would not be worth while, Allan," his father said. "They will
all make stout men-at-arms some day, and will have to fight under
my banner. I care as little as any man what my vassals think of
me, seeing that whatsoever they think they have to do mine orders.
But it needs not to set them against one needlessly; so let the
varlets go on with their play undisturbed."

That evening Archie said to his mother, "How is it, mother, that
the English knight whom I today saw ride past with the Kerr is
governor of our Scottish town of Lanark?"

"You may well wonder, Archie, for there are many in Scotland
of older years than you who marvel that Scotsmen, who have always
been free, should tolerate so strange a thing. It is a long story,
and a tangled one; but tomorrow morning I will draw out for you
a genealogy of the various claimants to the Scottish throne, and
you will see how the thing has come about, and under what pretence
Edward of England has planted his garrisons in this free Scotland
of ours."

The next morning Archie did not forget to remind his mother of her
promise.

"You must know," she began, "that our good King Alexander had three
children--David, who died when a boy; Alexander, who married a
daughter of the Count of Flanders, and died childless; and a daughter,
Margaret, who married Eric, the young King of Norway. Three years
ago the Queen of Norway died, leaving an only daughter, also named
Margaret, who was called among us the `Maid of Norway,' and who,
at her mother's death, becam