A great deal of taunting and ill humour prevailed between these capricious and inexperienced striplings, and sorely was Tudor pressed to take share of a bed with the prince, but in vain--his feelings recoiled from it; and the other, being in possession of a secret of which the English lord was not aware, took that advantage of teazing and tormenting him almost beyond sufferance. After all, it was decided that each should sleep with his own page; a decision that did not seem to go well down at all with the Yorkshire boy, who once ventured to expostulate with his lord, but was silenced with a look of angry disdain. CHAPTER V. He set her on his milk-white steed, Himself lap on behind her, And they are o'er the Highland hills; Her friends they cannot find her. As they rode over hill and dale This lady often fainted, And cried, "Wo to my cursed moneye, That this road to me invented." _Ballad of Rob Roy._ O cam ye here to fight, young man, Or cam ye here to flee? Or cam ye out o' the wally west Our bonnie bride to see? _Ballad called Foul Play._ It is by this time needless to inform my readers, that these two young adventurers were no other than the rival beauties of the two nations, for whose charms all this bloody coil was carried on at Roxburgh; and who, without seeing, had hated each other as cordially as any woman is capable of hating her rival in beauty or favour. So much had the siege and the perils of Roxburgh become the subject of conversation, that the ears of the two maidens had long listened to nothing else, and each of them deemed her honour embarked in the success of her lover. Each of them had set out with the intent of visiting the camp in disguise; and having enough of interest to secure protections for feigned names, each determined to see her rival in the first place, the journey not being far; and neither of them it is supposed went with any kind intent. Each of them had a maid dressed in boy's clothes with her, and five stout troopers, all of whom were utterly ignorant of the secret. The princess had by chance found out her rival's sex; but the Scottish lady and her attendant being both taller and of darker complexions than the other two, no suspicions were entertained against them detrimental to their enterprise. The princess never closed an eye, but lay meditating on the course she should take. She was convinced that she had her rival in her power, and she determined, not over generously, to take advantage of her good fortune. The time drew nigh that Roxburgh must be lost or won, and well she knew that, whichever side succeeded, according to the romantic ideas of that age, the charms of the lady would have all the honour, while she whose hero lost would be degraded,--considerations which no woman laying claim to superior and all-powerful charms could withstand.