It was some four years later, and the even tenor of Sister Clare’s course had only been interrupted by her kinswoman, Jaquette, making her way to her to confess her marriage with Richard Wydville, and to entreat her intercession with the Luxemburg family; when one summer night she was called on to attend a pilgrim priest from the Holy Land, who had been landed from a Flemish vessel, and lay dangerously sick at the ’God’s house,’ or hospital, by the river side.  He was thought by his accent to be foreign, and Sister Clare was always called on to wait upon the stranger.

As she stood by his bedside, she beheld a man of middle age, but wasted with sickness, and with a certain strange look of horror so imprinted on his brow, that even as he lay asleep, though his mouth was grave and peaceful, the lines were still there, and the locks that hung from around his tonsure were of a whiteness that scarce accorded with the features.  It was a face that Esclairmonde could not look at without waking strange memories; but it was not till the sleeper awakened, opened two dark eyes, gazed on her with dreamy doubtful wonder, and then clasped his hands with the murmured thanksgiving, ’My God, hast Thou granted me this?  Light of my life!’ that she was assured to whom she was speaking.

Malcolm Stewart it verily was.  Canon Malcolm Stewart of Dunkeld was his proper title, for he had, as she knew, long ceased to be Lord of Glenuskie.  It was not at first that she knew how he had been brought where she now saw him; but after some few days of her tender care and skilful leechcraft, he somewhat rallied, and she gathered his history from his conversation when he was able to speak.

He had had a time of happy labour in Scotland, fully carrying out the designs with which he and his cousin James Kennedy had taken upon them the ministry.  Their own birth, and the appointments their King gave them, so soon as their age permitted, made them able to exert an influence that told upon the rude and unenlightened clergy around.  It had been almost a mission of conversion, to awaken a spirit of Christianity in the country, that had so long been a prey to anarchy.  The King’s declaration, ’I will make the key keep the castle, and the bracken-bush keep the cow, though I live the life of a dog to bring it about,’ had been the moving spring of their lives.  James had fought hour by hour with the foul habits of lawlessness, savagery, and violence, that had hitherto been absolutely unchecked; and while he strove with the sword of justice, the two young priests worked within the Word of truth, to implant some sense of conscience in the neglected people.