He then dismounted, and was conducted into the town-hall, where a banquet
was prepared, taking by the hand Sir James Stewart, and followed by his
brother John, and by Malcolm, who felt as though his brain were turning,
partly with amazement, partly with confusion at his own dulness, as he
perceived that not only was the free-spoken Hal, Henry of Monmouth, King
of England, but that his wandering benefactor, the captive knight, whose
claim of kindred he had almost spurned, was his native sovereign, James
the First of Scotland.




CHAPTER IV: THE TIDINGS OF BEAUGE


Malcolm understood it at last. In the great chamber where he was bidden
to wait within 'Nigel' till 'Sir James' came from a private conference
with 'Harry,' he had all explained to him, but within a curtness and
brevity that must not be imitated in the present narrative.

The squire Nigel was in fact Sir Nigel Baird, Baron of Bairdsbrae, the
gentleman to whom poor King Robert II. had committed the charge of his
young son James, when at fourteen he had been sent to France, nominally
for education, but in reality to secure him from the fate of his brother
Rothsay.

Captured by English vessels on the way, the heir of Scotland had been too
valuable a prize to be resigned by the politic Henry IV., who had lodged
him at Windsor Castle, together with Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, and
placed both under the nominal charge of the Prince of Wales, a youth of a