interpolation and ascendency of strangers was a continual source of
jealousy and ire to the ancient retainers of the olden heritage, and
continually threatened to break out into open feud, had not the soothing
policy of the Countess Margaret and her descendants, by continually
employing them together in subjecting other petty clans, contrived to
keep them in good humor. As long as their lords were loyal to Scotland
and her king, and behaved so as to occasion no unpleasant comparison
between them and former superiors, all went on smoothly; but the haughty
and often outrageous conduct of the present earl, his utter neglect of
their interests, his treasonous politics, speedily roused the slumbering
fire into flame. A secret yet solemn oath went round the clan, by which
every fighting man bound himself to rebel against their master, rather
than betray their country by siding with a foreign tyrant; to desert
their homes, their all, and disperse singly midst the fastnesses and
rocks of Scotland, than lift up a sword against her freedom. The
sentiments of the countess were very soon discovered; and even yet
stronger than the contempt and loathing with which they looked upon the
earl was the love, the veneration they bore to her and to her children.
If his mother's lips had been silent, the youthful heir would have
learned loyalty and patriotism from his brave though unlettered
retainers, as it was to them he owed the skin and grace with which he
sate his fiery steed, and poised his heavy lance, and wielded his
stainless brand--to them he owed all the chivalric accomplishments of
the day; and though he had never quitted the territories of Buchan, he
would have found few to compete with him in his high and gallant spirit.

Dark and troubled was the political aspect of unhappy Scotland, at the
eventful period at which our tale commences. The barbarous and most
unjust execution of Sir William Wallace had struck the whole country as
with a deadly panic, from which it seemed there was not one to rise to