His thoughts were perhaps with the battle, for presently he looked up, and murmured the verse: 

   ’"I had a dream, a weary dream,
      Ayont the Isle of Skye;
   I saw a dead man win a fight,
      And I think that man was I.”

That stave keeps ringing in my brain; nor can I tell where or when I have heard it.’

‘’Tis from the Scottish ballad that sings of the fight of Otterburn,’ said James; ‘I brought it with me from Scotland.’

‘And got little thanks for your pains,’ said Henry, smiling.  ’But, methinks, since no Percy is in the way, I would hear it again; there was true knighthood in the Douglas that died there.’

James’s harp was never far off; and again his mellow voice went through that gallant and plaintive strain, though in a far more subdued manner than the first time he had sung it; and Henry, weakened and softened, actually dropped a brave man’s tear at the ’bracken bush upon the lily lea,’ and the hero who lay there.

‘That I should weep for a Douglas!’ he said, half laughing; ’but the hearts of all honest men lie near together, on whatever side they draw their swords.  God have mercy on whosoever may fall to-morrow!  I trow, Jamie, thou couldst not sing that rough rhyme of Agincourt.  I was bashful and ungracious enough to loathe the very sound of it when I came home in my pride of youth; but I would lief hear it once more.  Or, stay—­Yorkshiremen always have voices;’ and raising his tone, he unspeakably gratified Trenton and Kitson by the request; and their voices, deep and powerful, and not uncultivated, poured forth the Lay of Agincourt to the waves of the French river, and to its mighty victor: 

   ‘Our King went forth to Normandye.’

Long and lengthily chanted was the triumphant song, with the Latin choruses, which were echoed back by the escort on the bank; while Henry lay, listening and musing; and Malcolm had time for many a thought and impulse.

Patrick’s life was granted; although it had been promised too late to send the intelligence back to the tent at Corbeil.  So far, the purpose of his vow to St. Andrew had been accomplished; but with the probability that he should soon again be associated with Patrick, came the sense of the failure in purpose and in promise.  Patrick would not reproach him, he well knew—­nay, would rejoice in the change; but even this certainty galled him, and made him dread his cousin’s presence as likely to bring him a sense of shame.  What would Patrick think of his letting a lady be absolutely compelled to marry him?  Might he not say it was the part of Walter Stewart over again?  Indeed, Malcolm remembered how carefully King James was prevented from hearing the means by which the Countess intended to make the lady his own; and a sensation came over him, that it was profanation to call on St. Andrew to bless what was to be brought about by such means.  Why was it that, as his eyes fell on the face of King Henry, the whole world and all his projects acquired so different a colouring? and a sentence he had once heard Esclairmonde quote would come to him constantly:  ’My son, think not to buy off God.  It is thyself that He requires, not thy gifts.’