is
court. Himself, his three brothers, Edward, Alexander, and Thomas,
Douglas, Sir Niel Campbell, and his remaining two hundred followers,
resolved on cautiously making their way southward across Loch Lomond,
and proceed thence to the coast of Ireland, there to await the spring.
In pursuance of this plan, Sir Niel Campbell was dispatched without
delay to conciliate Angus, Lord of the Isles, to whom Cantire then
belonged. Knowing he was unfriendly to his near neighbors, the Lords of
Lorn, the king trusted he should find in him a powerful ally. To appeal
yet more strongly to the chivalric hospitality which characterized the
chieftain, Sir Niel consented that his wife and daughter Isoline should
accompany him. Lady Campbell had too lately undergone the grief and
anxiety attendant on the supposed loss of her husband to consent to
another parting. Even the king, her brother, sought not to dissuade her;
but all persuasions to induce Agnes to accompany them were vain; bitter
as the pang of separation was to her already aching heart--for Lady
Campbell and Isoline were both most dear to her--she steadily resolved
to remain with the queen and her attendants, and thus share the fate of
her betrothed.

"Did not my mother commend me to thy care? Did she not bid thee tend me
as a brother until happier hours, and shall I seek other guardianship
than thine, my Nigel?" were her whispered words, and Nigel could not
answer them. So pure, so unselfish was her love, that though he felt his
happiness would have departed with her presence, could he have commanded
words he would have implored her to seek the hospitality of the Lord of
the Isles as a securer home than Kildrummie. Those forebodings already
alluded to had returned with darker weight from the hour his separation
from his brother was resolved on. He evinced no sign of his inward
thoughts, he uttered no word of dissent, for the trust reposed in him by
his sovereign was indeed as precious as it was honorable; but there was
a mournful expression on his beautiful countenance--when unobserved, it
would rest upon his brother--that Agnes could not define, although it
filled her spirit with incomprehensible alarm, and urged her yet more to
abide by his side.

The dreaded day arrived at length, and agonized was indeed that parting.
Cheerfully the king looked, and hopefully he spoke, but it had no power
to calm the whelming tide of sorrow in which his wife clung to his
embrace. Again and a