to designate an
English invader as "a pleasant enemy," and whether there was some scheme
which came to nothing under this remarkable and harmless raid, or
whether it was only the carrying out of Henry's own policy "to busy
giddy minds with foreign quarrels"

"Lest rest and lying still might make them look
Too near unto my state,"

it is difficult to say. The nobles pent up in Edinburgh Castle with the
hot-headed young Prince at their head did not know what to make of the
pleasant enemy. The alarm he had caused, compelling their own withdrawal
into the stronghold, wrath at the mere sight of him there in the heart
of Scotland, the humiliating inaction in which they were kept by a foe
which neither attacked nor withdrew, must have so chafed the Prince and
his companions that the challenge thrown forth like a bugle from the
heights to break this oppressive silence and bring about the lingering
crisis one way or another must have been a relief to their excitement if
nothing else. One of the bewildered reasons alleged for the invasion is
that young David had written letters to France in which he called
Bolingbroke a traitor--letters which had fallen into Henry's hands; but
this is as unlikely to have brought about the invasion as any other
frivolous cause, though no doubt it might make the young Prince still
more eager to take upon himself the settling of the quarrel. We have no
reason to suppose that any foreboding of his fate had crossed the mind
of the youth at this period of his career, yet to watch the army of
England lying below, and to know his uncle Albany close at hand, and to
feel himself incapable--with nothing but a limited garrison at his
command and no doubt the wise Douglas and the other great noblemen
holding him back--of meeting the invader except by some such fantastic
chivalrous expedient, must have been hard enough.

And how strange is the scene, little in accordance with the habits and
traditions of either country: the English camp all quiet below, as if on
a holiday expedition, the Scots looking on in uneasy expectation, not
knowing what the next moment might bring. The excitement must have grown
greater from day to day within and without, while all the inhabitants,
both citizens and garrison, kept anxious watch to detect the first sign
of the enemy's advance. Henry, we are told, was called away to oppose a
rising in Wales; not indeed that rising which we all know so well in
which Prince Hal,