Here would be the rendezvous for some few weeks; here would Margaret and her companions rest a while from their fatiguing wanderings; and could they have thought but of the present, they would have been completely happy. Here would their faithful knights return laden with the spoils of the chase, or with some gay tale of danger dared, encountered, and conquered; here would the song send its full tone amid the responding echoes. The harp and muse of Nigel gave a refinement and delicacy to these meetings, marking them, indeed, the days of chivalry and poetry. Even Edward Bruce, the stern, harsh, dark, passioned warrior, even he felt the magic of the hour, and now that the courage of Nigel had been proved, gave willing ear, and would be among the first to bid him wake his harp, and soothe the troubled visions of the hour; and Robert, who saw so much of his own soul reflected in his young brother, mingled as it was with yet more impassioned fervor, more beautiful, more endearing qualities, for Nigel had needed not trial to purify his soul, and mark him out a patriot. Robert, in very truth, loved him, and often would share with him his midnight couch, his nightly watchings, that he might confide to that young heart the despondency, the hopelessness, that to none other might be spoken, none other might suspect--the secret fear that his crime would be visited on his unhappy country, and he forbidden to secure her freedom even by the sacrifice of his life. "If it be so, it must be so; then be thou her savior, her deliverer, my Nigel," he would often urge; "droop not because I may have departed; struggle on, do as thy soul prompts, and success will, nay, must attend thee; for thou art pure and spotless, and well deserving of all the glory, the blessedness, that will attend the sovereign of our country freed from chains; thou art, in truth, deserving of all this, but I--" "Peace, peace, my brother!" would be Nigel's answer; "thou, only thou shalt deliver our country, shall be her free, her patriot king! Have we not often marked the glorious sun struggling with the black masses of clouds which surround and obscure his rising, struggling, and in vain, to penetrate their murky folds, and deluge the world with light, shining a brief moment, and then immersed in darkness, until, as he nears the western horizon, the heaviest clouds flee before him, the spotless azure spreadeth its beautiful expanse, the brilliant rays dart on every side, warming and cheering the whole earth with reviving beams, and finally sinking to his rest in a flood of splendor, more dazzling, more imposing than ever attends his departure when his dawn hath been one of joy. Such is thy career, my brother; such will be thy glorious fate. Oh, droop not even to me--to thyself! Hope on, strive on, and thou shalt succeed!"