Broken in spirit, the proud Countess Margaret, whilom the Fair Maid of Galloway, condescended at last to seek the forgiveness and protection of King James II., after which, as she was still the loveliest woman of her time, he bestowed her in marriage upon his half brother, John, earl of Athole, son of the late Queen Jane and of the Black Knight of Lorn, who perished so miserably in Flanders. Robert, duke of Albany, died in exile, and no man in Scotland ever knew where he found a grave; but Sir Patrick Gray and Murielle lived long and happily. We know not which survived the other. He was created a peer of the realm by the title of Lord Balronald, and received the captaincy of the royal castle of Lochmaben, which he defended valiantly against the English in the year 1460, during that war in which James II. perished by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh, when standing by the side of Sir John Romanno, near the old Thorn Tree, at Fleurs. William Lord Crichton, the wily and somewhat unscrupulous old chancellor, died in peace in 1455, at his own stately castle in Lothian, and lies interred in the old church near it. His aged compatriot, Sir Alexander Livingstone, died about the same time, after securing a peerage for his son, the captain of Stirling, who was created Lord Livingstone of Callendar, and Great Chamberlain of Scotland. We need scarcely inform the reader that the worthy abbot of Tongland never succeeded in his great project concerning the Master of Evil, whom he wished to destroy as an enemy by making him a friend; though in after-years a poor Capuchin of Venice revived the idea, by petitioning the states of that republic, and also the pope, on the same subject, and had the reward of being viewed by both as a--madman. The beautiful young queen, Mary d'Egmont of Gueldres, only survived her husband three years. It was our strange fortune to behold her remains, previous to their re-interment at Holyrood, in May, 1848, when nothing remained of those charms which she inherited from the houses of Cleves, Burgundy, and Gueldres, save her teeth, which, after having been three hundred and eighty-five years in the grave, were singularly white and regular. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Captain of the Guard, by James Grant