"But think no more of him, I command you, for he is better as he is, dead, than living to be the rival of Robert, duke of Albany."
"Do not tell me, sister, that he was slain," said Murielle, in an imploring voice, while, her tears again fell fast; "he is not dead. I know that he is not dead!"
"You know?" said Margaret, changing colour.
"Yes."
"Indeed—how?"
"Because I am living still!" replied Murielle, with divine confidence and hope.
CHAPTER XIX.
A FEUDAL LORD.
And joy is mine
When the strong castles besieged shake,
And walls uprooted, totter and quake,
And I see the foemen join,
On the moated shore all compass'd round
With palisade and guarded mound.
Lays of the Minnesingers.
The result of this conversation, the wild and daring schemes of ambition and revenge it unfolded,—schemes of which she was to be made the tool and the victim, filled Murielle with alarm, and made her more than ever resolve to seek refuge in a convent; but an escape from the guarded castle of Thrave was not a matter to be easily accomplished, as its garrison, formed of the earl's most faithful "retainers, was (as we are told in the third of volume of 'Caledonia'), never less than one thousand armed men."
A recent writer says, "in Scotland, but a hundred years ago, the head of a family was paramount, and household discipline was wielded without mercy." If such was the case a hundred years ago, it was exercised with greater rigour in the days of the second James.