perished, he
had indeed received the death-wound to his own fragile nature.

He had been actually in the Abbey of Perth; and had been one of those who
lifted the mangled corpse from the vault, and sought in vain for a
remnant of life, if but to grant the absolution, for which the victim had
so piteously besought his murderers. No wonder that Fastern's E'en had
whitened Malcolm's hair!

But when the assassins were captured, and Joan of Beaufort was resolved
that their death should be as atrocious as their crime, it was Malcolm
who strove to bend her to forgiveness. He bade her recollect King Henry,
and how, when dealing with that cruel monster, the Castellane of Meaux,
he had merely required death, without enhancing the agony; but Joan, in
her rage and misery, had left the Englishwoman behind her, and was
implacable. All that human cruelty could invent was to be the lot of
Robert Graham and his associates; and whereas they had granted no priest
to their victim, none should be granted to them.

And then it was that all Malcolm had learnt of the true spirit of the
Christian triumphed--not only over the dark Keltic spirit of revenge, but
over the shuddering of a tender and pitiful nature. Where no other
priest durst venture, he went. Through all the frightful and protracted
sufferings of Athol, Graham, Hall, and the rest, it was Malcolm Stewart
who, never flinching, prayed with and for them; gathered their agonized
sobs of confession, or strove to soften their hardness; spoke the words
of absolution, and commended their departing souls.

When he awoke from the long unconsciousness and delirium that ensued upon
the force he had put on himself, he found himself tended by his sister at
Glenuskie. Patrick Drummond had transported him thither; finding that
the angry Queen, in the madness of her vindictiveness, was well-nigh
disposed to connect him with the treasonable designs of Athol and Graham.
He slowly and partially recovered, but his influence was gone; the Queen
would not brook the sound of his name, the little king was beyond his
reach, James Kennedy was biding his time, and the country was returned to
its state of misrule and violence, wherein an individual priest could do
little: yet Malcolm would have held by his post, had not his health been
so utterly shattered that he was incapable of the work he had hitherto
done, as a confessor and a preacher. And therefore, as the state of his
beloved King, 'sent to hi