It was the evening after Bannockburn. The English hosts were in panic-stricken flight; Scotland at last was free. Robert Bruce, king and conquerer, entered the Abbey of Cambuskenneth with his betrothed, Isabella, and stood before the bier of Wallace.
Helen, wan and fragile, was borne on a litter from the adjoining nunnery. In her presence Bruce and Isabella were wedded; her trembling hands were held over them in blessing; then she threw herself prostrate on the coffin.
At the foot of Wallace's bier stood the iron box that the dead chieftain had so faithfully cherished. "Let this mysterious coffer be opened," said the Abbot of Inchaffray, "to reward the deliverer of Scotland according to its intent" Bruce unclasped the lock, and the regalia of Scotland was discovered!
"And thus Wallace crowns thee!" said the Bishop of Dunkeld, taking the diadem from its coffer and setting it on Brace's head.
But Helen lay motionless. They raised her, and looked upon a clay-cold face. Her soul had fled.
ALEXANDER SERGEYEVITCH PUSHKIN
The Captain's Daughter
Alexander Sergeyevitch Pushkin was born at Moscow on June 7, 1799. He came of an ancient family, a strange ancestor being a favourite negro ennobled by Peter the Great, who bequeathed to him a mass of curly hair and a somewhat darker skin than usually falls to the lot of the ordinary Russian. Early in life a daring "Ode to Liberty" brought him the displeasure of the court, and the young poet narrowly escaped a journey to Siberia by accepting an official post at Kishineff, in Southern Russia. But on the accession of Tsar Nicholas in 182s, Pushkin was recalled and appointed imperial historiographer. His death, which occurred on February 10, 1837, was the result of a duel fought with his brother-in-law. Pushkin's career was one of almost unparallelled brilliancy. As a poet, he still remains the greatest Russia has produced; and although his prose works do not rise to the high standard of his verse, yet they are of no inconsiderable merit. "The Captain's Daughter, a Russian Romance," was written about 1831, and published under the nom de plume of Ivan Byelkin. It is a story of the times of Catherine II., and is not only told with interest and charm, but with great simplicity and reality, and with a due sense of drama. Others of his novels are "The Pistol Shot," "The Queen of Spades," and "The Undertaker," the last-named a grim story in a style that has been familiarised to English readers by Edgar Allan Poe.