If Hume was thus courted by his companions, and urged by Brydone to the dangerous enterprise in which the king, by the wiles and flattery of the French queen, had engaged, he was treated in a very different manner by Margaret, his wife,--a fine young woman, who, fond to distraction of her husband, was desirous of preventing him from risking his life in a cause which she feared, with prophetic feeling, would bring desolation on her country. Every effort which love and female cajolery could suggest was used by this dutiful wife to keep her husband at home. She hung round his neck,--held up to his face a fine child five months old, whose mute eloquence softened the heart, but could not alter the purpose of the father,--wept, prayed, implored. She asked him the startling question--Who, when he was dead--and die he might--would shield her from injury and misfortune, and cherish, with the tenderness and love which its beauty and innocence deserved, the interesting pledge of their affection? She painted in glowing colours--which the imagination, excited by love, can so well supply--the situation of her as a widow and her child as an orphan. Their natural protector gone, what would be left to her but grief, what would remain for her child but destitution? His spirit would hear her wails; but beggary would array her in its rags, and hunger would steal from her cheek the vestiges of health and the lineaments of beauty. These appeals were borne by Hume by the panoply of resolution. He loved Margaret as dearly, as truly as man could love woman, as a husband could love the partner of his life and fortunes. He answered with tears and embraces; but he remained true to the cause of his king and his country. "Would you hae me, Margaret," he said, "to disgrace mysel' in the face o' my townsmen? Doesna our guid king intend to leave his fair Margaret, and risk the royal bluid o' the Bruce for the interests o' auld Scotland? and doesna our honoured provost mean to desert, for a day o' glory, his braw wife, that he may deck her wimple wi' the roses o' England, and her name wi' a Scotch title? Wharfore, then, should I, a puir tradesman, fear to put in jeopardy for the country that bore me the life that is hers as weel as yours, and sacrifice, sae far as the guid that my arm can produce, the glory o' my king and the character o' my country?"