Then we heard that no hindrance would be offered by her should any wish to join the Bruce; and now she has sent by a messenger a letter under her hand ordering that a troop of fifty men shall be raised to join the king, and that it shall fight under the leading and order of Sir Archibald Forbes." "I had not heard that Sir Allan had fallen," Archie said to the king as they walked apart from the place where the man was standing; "and in truth I had forgotten that he even had a sister.

She must have been a child when I was a boy at Glen Cairn, and could have been but seldom at the castle--which, indeed, was no fit abode for so young a girl, seeing that Sir John's wife had died some years before I left Glen Cairn.

Perhaps she was with her mother's relations.

I have heard that Sir John Kerr married a relation of the Comyns of Badenoch.

`Tis strange if, being of such bad blood on both sides, she should have grown up a true Scotchwoman--still more strange she should send her vassals to fight under the banner of one whom she must regard as the unlawful holder of her father's lands of Aberfilly." "Think you, Sir Archie," the king said, "that this is a stratagem, and that these men have really come with a design to seize upon you and slay you, or to turn traitors in the first battle ?" Archie was silent.