r was wifeless and childless, and the heir to the
Scottish crown was his two-year-old grandchild in "Norroway ower the
faem."

In the eyes of all his people the King's duty was plain. He was only
forty-four, a brilliant _parti_ for the daughter of any royal or noble
house, and the Scots wished a man, not a maid, to rule over them. He
must, obviously, marry again. Joleta, also called Yolande, daughter of
the Count de Dreux, and a descendant of the Kings of France, was his
chosen bride. She was of surpassing fairness, and even most of those who
had harboured scruples with regard to the match, because the maid had
been destined for a nunnery, forgot such scruples when they looked upon
her beauty.

On All Saints' Day, 1285, the wedding--a more brilliant function than
anything that had ever before been held in Scotland--was celebrated in
Jedburgh Abbey. The little grey town on the Jed was packed with Scottish
and French nobles and their retinues. Few were the noble houses that
were not there represented, and the monks of Beauvais--the black-cloaked
Augustinian friars from St. Quentin's Abbey--who held rule at the Abbey
of Jedburgh in those days, must have had their ears gladdened by the
constant sound of the French tongue coming from seigneur, squire, and
page-boy who passed them on the causeway.

There was nothing awanting in pomp or in splendour at the royal wedding.
The trees were shedding their leaves, the bracken and the heather on the
moors were brown, and winds that swept across the Carter Bar and down
from the Cheviots had a winter nip in them; but indoors there was warmth
enough, and all the gorgeousness and feasting and merrymaking that the
most exacting of guests could desire for the marriage of a great king.
The banquet after the wedding was followed by a masque. Musicians
ushered into the banqueting hall of the castle a gorgeously attired
procession of dancers, many of them armed men. It was a radiant scene
for the bright eyes of Queen Yolande. Lights flashed on swords and on
armour, and on the sumptuous trappings and brilliant-coloured attire of
lords and of ladies, for courts in those days looked like hedges of
sweet-peas in the summer sun. The musicians played their best, the
guests mingled gaily with the dancing mummers, and then, suddenly, above
all the sounds of music and of revel, there arose a cry, a woman's cry,
shrill and full of fear. What was that grisly figure that appeared
amongst the dancers?--