In a much shorter time than we have taken to describe this, however, the queen had raised her head, and looking up in her husband's face with an expression of devotedness, which gave her countenance a charm it had never had before, fervently exclaimed-- "Robert, come woe or weal, I will abide with thee; her husband's side is the best protection for a wife; and if wandering and suffering be his portion, who will soothe and cheer as the wife of his love?
My spirit is but cowardly, my will but weak; but by thee I may gain the strength which in foreign lands could never be my own.

Imaginary terrors, fancied horrors would be worse, oh, how much worse than reality! and when we met again I should be still less worthy of thy love.

No, Robert, no! urge me not, plead to me no more.

My friends may do as they will, but Margaret abides with thee." "And who is there will pause, will hesitate, when their queen hath spoken thus ?" continued the Countess of Buchan in a tone that to Margaret's ear whispered approval and encouragement.

"Surely, there is none here whose love for their country is so weak, their loyalty to their sovereign of such little worth, that at the first defeat, the first disappointment, they would fly over seas for safety, and contentedly leave the graves of their fathers, the hearths of their ancestors, the homes of their childhood to be desecrated by the chains of a foreign tyrant, by the footsteps of his hirelings?
Oh, do not let us waver! Let us prove that though the arm of woman is weaker than that of man, her spirit is as firm, her heart as true; and that privation, and suffering, and hardship encountered amid the mountains of our land, the natural fastnesses of Scotland, in company with our rightful king, our husbands, our children--all, all, aye, death itself, were preferable to exile and separation.