Six months had scarcely run their course after the marriage, when the war broke out between Stephen, the unpopular usurper of the English throne, and his fair relative and competitor, Maude. Margaret's husband was among the first to join the standard of King David, and to fling himself within the ranks of those who opposed Stephen. Alas! he was among the first also to fall a victim to that sanguinary strife, being slain in a mere chance skirmish, into which his zeal and well-known bravery had unhappily led him. Poor Margaret might well be overwhelmed by such a fearful and unlooked-for bereavement. Reason almost gave way; and during the time that partial delirium deprived her of consciousness, her husband's kinsmen mercifully consigned the gashed and ghastly corpse to its last home, that the widow's eye might never look with agony upon the loved and distorted features of her slaughtered soldier. When the elder sister heard of this sudden sharp calamity, her heart melted within her. In the presence of death, anger and hate, and jealousy, and wounded love, and baffled hope, stood solemnly rebuked. The cause of their disunion no longer found a place within their memory; but a more unclouded past, childhood and girlhood, the recollections of an era teeming with thoughts and images of love and tenderness--of a time when they two nestled their soft cheeks upon the same pillow, wove the same woof, shared the same rambles to Kellie-law and Kilconquhar Loch, to Macduff's Cave and Balcarras Craig--cherished the same dear rose-tree, wept and laughed, grew pale or crimson, sad or merry, as the same feelings swayed the hearts of both--came thronging to her mind; and as the past brought with it such gentle harmonising influences, why should they not renew it in the future? They had been too long widely and unwisely severed. Henceforth they would have, as they had had of yore, but one home and one heart. Borne down, indeed, still almost distraught with grief, the younger yet could find a solace and a mitigation of her sorrow in her reunion with her elder sister; and when the latter fell upon the widow's bosom, and brokenly sobbed out her sorrow for the past, her grief for this last heavy stroke, and spoke of hope for better days, when suffering should be softened down by time, and submission soothe regret, her dark eyes kindled through her tears, and a faint smile, like a ray of fleeting sunshine gilding the blackness of the storm, played momentarily upon her compressed and pallid lips.