on of the events related in the preceding
chapter, it will be necessary to cast a summary glance on matters of
historical and domestic import no way irrelevant to our subject, save
and except their having taken place some few years previous to the
commencement of our tale.

The early years of Isabella of Buchan had been passed in happiness. The
only daughter, indeed for seven years the only child, of Malcolm, Earl
of Fife, deprived of her mother on the birth of her brother, her youth
had been nursed in a tenderness and care uncommon in those rude ages;
and yet, from being constantly with her father, she imbibed those higher
qualities of mind which so ably fitted her for the part which in after
years it was her lot to play. The last words of his devoted wife,
imploring him to educate her child himself, and not to sever the tie
between them, by following the example of his compeers, and sending her
either to England, France, or Norway, had been zealously observed by the
earl; the prosperous calm, which was the happy portion of Scotland
during the latter years of Alexander III., whose favorite minister he
was, enabled him to adhere to her wishes far more successfully than
could have been the case had he been called forth to war.

In her father's castle, then, were the first thirteen years of the Lady
Isabella spent, varied only by occasional visits to the court of
Alexander, where her beauty and vivacity rendered her a universal
favorite. Descended from one of the most ancient Scottish families,
whose race it was their boast had never been adulterated by the blood of
a foreigner, no Norman prejudice intermingled with the education of
Isabella, to tarnish in any degree those principles of loyalty and
patriotism which her father, the Earl of Fife, so zealously inculcated.
She was a more true, devoted Scottish woman at fourteen, than many of
her own rank whose years might double hers; ready even then to sacrifice
even life itself, were it called for in defence of her sovereign, or the
freedom of her country; and when, on the death of Alexander, clouds
began to darken the horizon of Scotland, her father scrupled not to
impart to her, child though she seemed, those fears and anxieties which
clouded his brow, and filled his spirit with foreboding gloom. It was
then that in her flashing eye and lofty soul, in the undaunted spirit,
which bore a while even his colder and more foreseeing mood along with
it, that he traced the fruit