"Dear Messire," she said sweetly and almost confidently, "you have a little girl of your own. I know, for I have played with her. I love her. Therefore you will not hurt us. I am sure you will not hurt us. You are going to send us back in a ship to our own country, because it is lonely here where Maud and I know no one!"

The marshal smiled upon her his inhuman inscrutable smile. He leaned against a pillar of strangely twisted design, and contemplated the two victims at his ease.

"Life is sweet to you, is it not?" he said at last; "you are truly happy, being young, and so have no need to be made young again."

"Oh, but I am very old," cried the Maid, gaining some confidence from the quiet of his voice, "I am nearly eight years old. And our Maudie here, she is—oh, a dreadful age! She is very, very old!"

"You would not like to die?" suggested Gilles de Retz, with a certain soft insinuation.

"Oh, no," said Margaret Douglas, "I am going to live long and long—till every one in the world loves me. I am going to help every one to get what he most desires. And you know I can, for I shall be very rich. And if what they say is true, and I am Princess of Galloway, I shall marry and be a very great lady. But I shall never marry any one who is not a Douglas."

The marshal nodded.

"I do not think that you shall marry any one who is not a Douglas!" he said, with a certain grave and not discourteous irony in his tones.

"Yes," the little Maid went on. She had lost all fear in the very act of speech. "Yes, and Maud, she is going to marry Sholto—and they will be very happy, for they love each other so. I know it, for she told me to-night just before you sent for us to come to your feast. That was kind of you to remember us, though it was past bed-time. But now, good marshal, you will send us back, will you not? Now, look kind to-night. You will be glad afterwards that you were good to two maids who never harmed you, but are ready to love you if you prove kind to them."

"Hush, Margaret," said Maud Lindesay. "It is useless to speak such words to such a man."

The Marshal de Retz turned sharply to her.

"Ah," he said, with a curious bite in his speech, "then, my young lady, you would not love me, even if I were to let you go!"

"I should hate and abominate you for ever and ever, even if you helped me into Paradise!" quoth Maud Lindesay, giving him defiance in a full eye-volley.

"So," he said calmly, "I am indeed likely to help you into Paradise this very night. That is, unless Saint Peter of the Keys makes up his mind that so outspoken and tricksome a maid had best take a few thousand years of purgatory—as it were on her way upwards, en passant."

A sudden lowering passion at this point altered his countenance.

"No," he thundered, standing up erect from the pillar against which he had been leaning, and his whole voice and bearing changing past description, "it is enough—listen! I will be brief with you. I have brought both of you here that you may die. I cannot expect of you that you will understand or appreciate my motives, which are indeed above the knowledge of children. This is a temple to a Great God, and he demands the sacrifice of the noblest and most innocent blood. I do you the honour to believe that it is here to my hand. Also, your deaths will cause a number of people both in Scotland and elsewhere to sit easier in their seats. Lastly, I had sworn that you should die if your friends from Scotland came to trouble me. They have come, and Gilles de Retz keeps his word—as doth the Master whom he serveth!"

He bowed in the direction of the vast shadowy figure, which to Laurence's eye appeared to turn towards his niche with a leer, as if to say, "Listen to him. What a fool he is!"

The maids stood silent, not comprehending aught save that they were to die. Then suddenly Gilles de Retz cried out in his loudest military tones—"Henriet, Poitou, De Sille, bind these maidens upon the iron altar, that Barran-Sathanas may feed his eyes on their beauty and rejoice!"

And as they stood motionless upon the square of white marble, the servitors came forward and led them to the great altar of iron. They lifted the maidens up and laid their bodies crosswise upon the vast grid, the bars of which were as thick as a man's arm, arranging them so that their heads hung without support over the bar next the shadowy image.

As they bound them rudely hand and foot, the long and beautiful hair of Maud Lindesay escaped from its fastenings and fell down till it reached the bath of red porphyry which extended underneath the whole length of the altar of iron.

Then through all the Temple of Evil there ensued sudden silence. Not a sob or a moan escaped from the doomed maidens, and the feet of the assistants fell silent and soft as the paws of wild beasts upon the ebon floor.

Gilles de Retz waited till his acolytes had retired to their appointed places, where they stood like carven statues watching what should happen. Then slowly and deliberately he ascended to the broad platform from which the iron altar rose, and stood with his arms folded over his flame-coloured robe, looking gloatingly down, upon his innocent victims. Maud Lindesay was the nearer to him, and her unbound hair fell back and touched the peak of his pointed shoe of crimson Cordovan leather.

With a quick movement he caught up a handful of its rich luxuriance and allowed it to run through his fingers like sand again and yet again, with apparent delight in the sensation.

Even as he did so the dim figure of the horned demon above appeared to lean forward as if to touch him, and with a rushing noise the great hour-glass set upon a pedestal at the foot of the image turned itself completely over. Gilles with a startled air turned also, and seeing what it was he laughed a strange hollow laugh.

"It is indeed the hour, the hour of doom, fair maids," he said, looking down upon them as deferentially as if he had been paying his court in the great hall of Thrieve, "but it shall not pass without taking with it your souls to another, and I trust a higher, sphere!"

He paused, but no complaint or appeal reached his cruel and inexorable ear. The certain graciousness of Providence to those in extreme peril seemed to have blunted the edge of fear in the innocent victims. They lay still and apparently without consciousness upon the iron altar. The red glow played upon their faces, shining through from the inner chamber, and the figure of the marshal stood out black against it.

On the floor lay the goblet from which he had drunk the Red Milk.

"Give me the knife!" he cried, sudden as a trumpet that is blown.

And reaching a withered hand within the marshal's chamber as if to detach something from the wall, La Meffraye hobbled quickly across the altar platform, bearing in her hand a shining weapon of steel, broad of blade and curved at the point. She placed the ebony handle in the marshal's hand, who weighed it lovingly in his grasp.

Then for the first time since the men had bound her, the sweet childish eyes of little Margaret were unclosed and looked up at Gilles de Retz with the touching wonder of helplessness and innocence.

At that moment the image appeared to Laurence to beckon to him out of the gloom. A quick and nervous resolve ran through his veins. His muscles became like steel within his flesh. He rose to his feet, and, without pause for thought, rushed across the chapel from the niche where he had been hidden.

"Murderer! Fiend! I will kill you!" he cried, and with his dagger bare in his hand he would have thrown himself upon the marshal. But swifter than the rush of the young man in his strength there came another from the door of the inner chamber.

With a deep-throated roar of wholly bestial fury, Astarte the she-wolf sprang upon Laurence, and, though he sank his dagger twice to the hilt in her hairy chest, she over-bore him and they fell to the ground with her teeth gripping his shoulder. Laurence felt the hot life-blood of the beast spurt forth and mingle with his own. Then a flood of swirling waters seemed to bear him suddenly away into the unknown.

* * * * *

When Laurence MacKim came to himself he emerged into a chill world in which he felt somehow infinitely lonely and forsaken. Next he grew slowly conscious that his feet and arms were bound tightly with cords that cut painfully into the flesh. Then he realised that he, too, had taken his place beside the maids upon the altar of iron. Strangely enough he did not feel afraid nor even wish himself elsewhere. He only wondered what would happen next.

He opened his eyes and lo! they looked directly into the leering countenance of the monstrous image. Yet there seemed something curiously encouraging and even beneficent about the aspect of the demon. But so often as Gilles de Retz passed the triple array of his victims with his back to the image, the regard of the sculptured devil followed him, grim and mocking.

Words of angry altercation came to the ears of Laurence MacKim.

"I tell you," cried the voice of Gilles de Retz, "I will not spare them. Well nigh had I succeeded. Almost I was young again. I was tasting the first sweetness of knowledge wide as that of the gods. I felt the new life stirring within me. But I had not enough of the blood of innocence, which is the only worthy libation to Barran-Sathanas, who alone can bestow youth and life."

Then the Lady Sybilla answered him. "I pray you, Gilles de Retz, as you hope for mercy, slay not these maidens and this youth. Take me, and bind me, instead, for the sacrifice of death. I have wrought enough of evil! Take of my blood and work out your purpose. Let me give you the libation you desire. Gilles de Retz, if ever I have aided you, grant me this boon now. I beseech you, let these innocents go, and bind me upon the altar in their places."

Long and loud laughed Gilles de Retz, a hard, evil, and relentless laugh.

"Sybilla de Thouars an innocent maiden's sacrifice! Barran-Sathanas himself laughs at the jest. He would have no pleasure in your death. Soul and body you are his already. He desires only the blood and suffering of the innocent—of those on whom he has never set his mark. Nay, these three shall surely die, and in that bath of porphyry hollowed out under his altar I will lave me from head to foot in the Red Milk of innocence. I have no more need of you, Sybilla mine. You have done your work, and for your reward you can now depart to your own place. Out of my way, I say. Henriet, Poitou, quick! Remove this woman from before the altar!"

Then, struggling strongly in their hands, the servitors carried the Lady Sybilla to the farther end of the chapel, where they abode on either side, holding her fast. And as the last grains of sand began to swirl towards their fall and a little whirlpool to form funnel-wise in the midst of the hour-glass, the butcher was left alone with his victims upon the platform of the iron altar.

Gilles de Retz turned towards the image, and, lifting up his hand solemnly, he cried in a great voice, "O Barran-Sathanas, be pleased to behold this innocent blood spilled slowly in thine honour. As the red fount flows and the red fire burns, restore my youth and make me strong. Faithfully will I serve thee and thee alone, renouncing all other. O Barran-Sathanas, great and only Lord, receive my sacrifice. It is the hour!"

And so saying he laid hold of Maud Lindesay by the hair, and raised the curved knife on high.

Then from the end of the chapel to which the Lady Sybilla had been taken there came a sound. With a great despairing effort she burst from her captors' hands and ran forward. She knelt down on the marble slab whereon the maids had stood at their first entering, and as she knelt she held aloft a golden crucifix.

"If there be a God in heaven, let him manifest himself now!" she cried, "by the virtue of this cross of His son Jesus Christ, I call upon Him!"

Then suddenly all the place was filled with a mighty rushing noise. The last grains ran low in the hour-glass. It shifted in its stand and turned over. A tremor like that of an earthquake shook all the castle to its foundations. The solid keep itself rocked like a vessel in a stormy sea. The great image overturned, and by its fall Gilles de Retz was stricken senseless to the earth. The next moment, like flood-gates burst by a mighty tide, the doors of the temple were opened with a clang, and through them a crowd of armed men came rushing in with triumphant shouts and angry cries of vengeance.

Sholto was far ahead of the others, and, as if led by the unerring instinct of love, he ran to the altar whereon his love lay white as death, but without a mark upon her fair body.

It was the work of a moment to cut their cords and chafe the numbed wrists and ankles. James Douglas took the little Margaret. Sholto had his sweetheart in his arms, while Laurence recovered quickly enough to aid his father in securing Gilles de Retz and his servants. La Meffraye they took not, for she lay dead within the inner chamber, where yet burned the great fire which was used to consume the bodies of the demon's victims. Two gaping wounds were found in her breast, in the same place in which the dagger of Laurence MacKim had smitten the she-wolf as she sprang upon him. But Astarte, woman witch or were-wolf, was never seen again, neither by starlight, moonlight, nor yet in the eye of day. Truly of Gilles de Retz was it said, "His demon hath deserted him."

Beneath in the courts and quadrangles, swarming through the towers and clambering perilously on the roofs, surged the press of the furious populace. It was all that Duke John and his officers could do to keep the prisoners in ward, and to prevent them from being torn limb from limb (as had perhaps been fittest), and tossed alive into the flaming funeral pyre of Castle Machecoul, which, lighted by a hundred hands, presently began to flame like a volcano to the skies.

For the hour that comes to every evil-doer had come to Gilles de Retz. And in that hour, as it shall ever be, the devil in whom he trusted had forsaken him.

But the Lady Sybilla stood on the garden tower that in happier days had been her pleasaunce, and beheld. And as she watched she kissed the golden crucifix of the child Margaret. And her heart rejoiced because the lives of the innocent as well as the death of the guilty had been given her for her portion.

"And now, O Lord, I am ready to pay the price!" she said.



CHAPTER LX

HIS DEMON HATH DESERTED HIM

The soldiers of the Duke of Brittany stood with bared swords and deadly pikes around the Marshal de Retz and those of his servants who had been taken—that is to say, round Poitou, Clerk Henriet, Blanquet, and Robin Romulart. About them surged ever more fiercely the angry populace, drunk with the hot wine of destruction, having been filled with inconceivable fury by that which they had seen in the round tower wherein stood the filled bags of little charred remains.

"Tear the wolves into gobbets! Kill them! Burn them! Send them quick to Hell!" So ran the cry.

And twice and thrice the villagers of the Pays de Retz charged desperately as men who fight for their lives.

"Stand to it, men!" cried Pierre de l'Hopital. "Gilles de Retz shall have fair trial!

"But I shall try him!" he added, under his breath.

Never was seen such a sight as the procession which conducted Gilles de Retz to the city of Nantes. The Duke had sent for his whole band of soldiers, and these, in ordered companies, marched in front and rear. A triple file guarded the prisoners, and even their levelled pikes could scarce beat back the furious rushes of the populace.

It was like a civil war, for the assailants struck fiercely at the soldiers—as if in protecting him, they became accessory to the crimes of the hated marshal.

"Barbe Bleu! Barbe Bleu!" they cried. "Slay Barbe Bleu! Make his beard blood-red. He hath dipped it often in the life-blood of our children. Now we will redden it with his own!"

So ran the tumult, surging and gathering and scattering. And ever the pikes of the guard flashed, and the ordered files shouldered a path through the press.

"Make way there!" cried the provost marshals. "Make way for the prisoners of the Duke!"

And as they entered the city, from behind and before, from all the windows and roofs, rose the hoarse grunting roar of the hatred and cursing of a whole people.

But the object of all this rested calm and unmoved, and his cruel grey eye had no expression in it save a certain tolerant and amused contempt.

"Bah!" he muttered. "Would that I had slain ten millions of you! It is my only regret that I had not the time. It is almost unworthy to die for a few score children!"

During the journey to Nantes, Gilles de Retz kept the grand reserve with which, when he came to himself, he had treated those who had captured him. To the Duke only would he condescend to reply, and to him he rather spoke as an equal unjustly treated than as a guilty prisoner and suppliant.

"For this, Sire of Brittany," he said, "must you answer to your overlord, the King of France, whose minister and marshal I am!"

The Duke would have made some feeble reply, but Pierre de l'Hopital cut across the conversation with that stern irony which characterised him.

"My lord," he said, "remember that before you were made Marshal of France you were born a subject of the Duke of Brittany! And as such you shall be judged."

"I decline to stand at your tribunal!" said the marshal, haughtily.

"Soit!" said the President, indifferently, "but all the same you shall be tried!"

Duke John, knowing well that while his court was being held in the capital city of his province, and especially during the trial of Gilles de Retz, Nantes was no place for young maidens who had suffered like Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas, sent them under escort to the Castle of Angers.

Sholto MacKim and his father were allowed to accompany them, that they might not be without some of their own country to speak with during their sojourn in France. The Lord James, however, elected to abide with the court. For there were many ladies there, and, having nobility of address and desiring to perfect himself in the niceties of fashionable speech (which changed daily), he had great pleasure in their society, and rode in the lists by the side of the Loire with even more than his former gallantry and success.

For, as he said, he needed some compensation for the long abstinence enforced upon him by his habit of holy palmer. And right amply did he make himself amends, and was accounted by dames fair and free the lightsomest and properest Scot who had ever come into the land of France.

With him Laurence remained, both because his father was still angry with him on account of his desertion of them in Paris, and also because having been so long in the Castle of Machecoul, there were important matters concerning which in the forthcoming trial he alone could give evidence.

Pierre de l'Hopital would have detained the Lady Sybilla as a possible accomplice of the Sieur de Retz, but by the intercession of the Scottish maidens, as well as by the sworn evidence of Sholto and the Lord James, testifying that wholly by her means Gilles de Retz had finally been caught red-handed, she was permitted to depart whither she would.

"I will go to my sister," she said to Sholto, who came to know how he could serve her. "It matters little. My work is nearly done!"

So, riding as was her custom all alone upon a white palfrey, she passed out of their sight towards the south.

* * * * *

In the city of Nantes the rumour of the taking of Gilles de Retz had spread like wild-fire, and as the cavalcade rode through the streets, the windows rained down curses and the citizens hooted up from the sidewalks. But the marshal kept his haughty and disdainful regard, appearing like a noble nature who perforce companies for the nonce with meaner men. He sat his favourite charger like a true companion of Dunois and De Richemont, and, as more than one remarked, on this occasion he looked like the royal prince and the Duke of Brittany the prisoner.

So in the New Tower of the Castle of Nantes, Gilles de Retz was placed to wait his trial. There is no need to give a long account of it. The documents have been printed in plain letter, and all the world knows how Clerk Henriet faltered under the stern questioning of Pierre de l'Hopital, and how finally he declared fully all these iniquities without parallel in which he had borne so cruel a part.

Poitou, more faithful to his master, held out till the threat of torture and the appeals of his friend Henriet broke him down. But the attitude and bearing of the chief culprit deserve that the historian should not wholly pass them over.

Even in his first haughty and contemptuous silence, Gilles de Retz was shifting his ground, and with a cool unheated intelligence orienting himself to new conditions. It soon became evident to his mind that the powers of Evil in which he trusted, and to whose service he had consecrated his life and fortune, had befooled and betrayed him.

Well—even so would he fool them—if, by the grace of God, there were yet any merit or hope in the service of Good. The priests said so. The Scripture said so, and they might be right after all. At least, the thing was worth trying.

For a cold and calculating brain lay behind the worst excesses of the terrible Lord de Retz. The religion of the Cross might not be of much final use—still, it was all that remained, and Gilles de Retz determined to avail himself of it. So once more he apostasised from Barran-Sathanas to Jehovah.

With an effrontery almost too stupendous for belief, he arrayed himself in the white robes of a Carmelite novice and spent his prison days in singing litanies and in private confession with his religious adviser.

When the great day of the trial at last arrived, the marshal, who had expected on the bench the weak kindly countenance of Duke John, was called upon to confront the indomitable judicial rectitude of Pierre de l'Hopital, President and Grand-Seneschal of Brittany.

Gilles de Retz appeared at his trial dressed in white of the richest materials and with all his military decorations upon him. But his judge, habited in stern and simple black, was not in the least intimidated.

Then came the great surprise. After the evidence of Henriet and Poitou had been read to him, the marshal was asked to plead. To the surprise of all, the accused claimed benefit of clergy.

"I have been a great sinner," he said, "I have indeed deserved a thousand deaths. But now I am a man of God. I have confessed. I have received absolution for all my sins. God has forgiven me, and my soul is cleansed!"

"Good!" answered Pierre de l'Hopital, "I have nothing to do with your soul. I must leave that, as you very pertinently remark, to God. But I am here to try your body, and if found guilty to condemn that body to suffer the penalties by law provided according to the statutes of Brittany."

Then Clerk Henriet was brought in to testify more fully of the crimes beyond parallel in the history of mankind.

The court had been hung round with black, and the only object which appeared prominent was a beautiful ivory crucifix with a noble figure of the Redeemer of Men carved upon it. This was suspended, according to the custom, over the head of the President of the Tribunal.

Henriet had not proceeded far with his terrible relation of well nigh inconceivable crimes when he stopped.

"I cannot go on," he said, in a broken appealing voice; "I cannot tell what I have to tell with That Figure looking down upon me!"

So, with the whole Court standing up in reverence, the image of the Most Pitiful was solemnly veiled from sight, that such deeds of darkness might not be so much as named in that holy and gracious presence.

And during the ceremony Friar Gilles of the order of the Carmelites stood up more reverently than any, for now, seeing that no better might be, he had definitely renounced Barran-Sathanas and cast in his lot with God Almighty.

* * * * *

"The sentence of this court is that you, Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, Marshal of France, and you, Poitou and Henriet, be carried to the meadow of La Biesse at nine of the clock on the morning of to-morrow, and that you be there hanged and burned till you be dead. And to God the Just One be the glory!"

The voice of Pierre de l'Hopital rang out through the silence of the hall of judgment.

"Amen!" said Friar Gilles, devoutly crossing himself.

And so in due course on the meadow of La Biesse, by the side of the blue Loire, the evil soul of Gilles de Retz went to its own place with all the paraphernalia of repentance and in the full odour of a somewhat hectic sanctity.

* * * * *

The day after the burning, a little company of riders left the city of Angers, journeying westward along the Loire. It consisted of the maidens Margaret Douglas and Maud Lindesay, with Sholto MacKim and a dozen horsemen belonging to his Grace of Brittany. It had been arranged that they were to be joined, upon an eminence above the river on the right bank, by the Lord James, Malise, and Laurence, with the escort which was to accompany them to the port of Saint Nazaire. There (as was necessary in order to escape the troublesome navigation of the swift and treacherous upper reaches) they would find vessels ready to set sail for Scotland.

As the little cloud of riders left behind them the black towers of Angers, they passed through woodland glades wherein, in spite of the lateness of the season, the birds were singing. The air was mild and delightsome. At last, leaving the river, they struck away inland, having the frowning towers of Champtoce on their left as they rode. Presently they came to a forest, wherein in days before the great cruelty, Gilles de Retz had often hunted the wolf and the wild boar.

Here the woodland paths were covered deep with fallen leaves, and the naked branches spoke of the desolation of a dead year.

As the maids rode forward first of their company and talked, as was natural, of that which had taken place the day before at Nantes, they became aware of the Lady Sybilla riding towards them on her palfrey of white. She would have passed them without speech, with her head downcast and her eyes fixed upon the dank ground with its covering drift of dead autumnal leaves.

But Margaret, grateful for that which the Lady Sybilla had done for them at Machecoul, spurred her steed and rode thwartwise to intercept her.

"Sybilla," she said, "you will come with us to Scotland. I have many castles there, and, they tell me, a princessdom of mine own. We shall all be happy together and forget these ill times. Maud and I can never repay that which you have done for us."

"Yes, I pray you come with us," said Maud, a little more slowly, "we will be your sisters, and the ill times shall not come again."

The Lady Sybilla smiled a sad subtle smile and shook her head.

"I thank you. I thank you more than you know. It eases my heart that you should forgive a woman such as I for all the evil she has brought you and yours. But I am now no fit companion for you or any. I am become but a wandering shape, speaking to one who cannot answer, and seeking him whom I can never find."

The little Maid, being but a child, mistook her meaning.

"No, no," she cried, "your life is not done. If the one whom you love hath left you unkindly—well, bide awhile, and when the first smart is passed, we will marry you to some braver and more handsome knight. There are many such in Scotland. I pray you come with Maud and me even as we wish you. Why, there would not be three like us in all the land. I wager we will set kings by the ears between us. Though, as for me, I can only marry a Douglas!"

The smile of the Lady Sybilla grew ever sadder and ever sweeter.

"The man whom I loved, and who loved me, I betrayed to the death. There is no forgiveness for such as I in this life. Perhaps there may be in the next. At least, he forgave me, and that is enough. He believed in me against myself, and I will wait. Till then I go hither and thither and none shall hinder me or molest—for upon Sybilla de Thouars God hath set the seal of Cain!"

Margaret Douglas flicked her steed impatiently, causing the spirited little beast to curvet.

"I think it is very ill-done of you not to come to Scotland with us," she said petulantly, "when we would have been so good to you!"

"Too good, too kind," said the Lady Sybilla, very gently; "such kindness is not for such as I am. But if I may, while I live I will keep the golden cross you lent me—the crucifix your brother gave to you on your birthday!"

"Keep it—it is yours! I do not want it!" cried Margaret, glad to have found some way of evidencing her gratitude.

"I thank you," said Sybilla de Thouars; "some day I may come to Scotland. And if I do, you shall come out from Thrieve and meet me by the white thorns of the Carlinwark at the hour when the little children sing!"

And so, without other farewell, she turned and rode slowly away down the avenues of fallen leaves, till the folding woodlands hid her from the sight of those two who watched her with tear-blurred eyes and hearts strangely stirred with pity for the fate of her whom they had once hated with such good cause.



CHAPTER LXI

LEAP YEAR IN GALLOWAY

Morning dawned fair over the wide strath of Dee. Cairnsmuir and Ben Gairn stood out south and north like blue, round-shouldered sentinels. Castle Thrieve rose grey in the midst of the water-meadows, massive and sombre in the early sunrise.

Andro the Penman and his brother John, with the taciturnity natural to early risers, were silently hoisting the flag which denoted the presence of the noble young chatelaine of the great fortress.

Sholto also was early astir, for the affairs of the castle and of the host were in his hand, and there was much business to be despatched that morning. The young Avondale Douglases were riding away from Thrieve, for word had come that James the Gross, seventh Earl of Douglas, was surely at death's door.

"Besides," said William Douglas, "wherefore should we stay—our work is done. No one will molest our cousin in her heritages now! We five have stood about her while there was need. But for the present Sir Sholto and his men can keep count and reckoning with any from the back-shore of Leswalt to Berwick bound."

"Aye, indeed," cried James Douglas, "we will go till the time come when the suitors gather, like corbies about a dead lamb!"

"That is not a savoury comparison," cried Margaret of Douglas, now grown older, and already giving more than a mere promise of that wondrous beauty which afterwards made her celebrated in all lands, "but after all, you, cousin James, have some right to make it. For, but for you and our good Sholto there, this little ewe lamb would have been carrion indeed!"

"Good-by!" cried James of Avondale. "Haste thee and grow up, sweet coz. Then will I come back with the rest of the corbies and take my chance of the feast. I will keep myself for that day."

But William Douglas sat square and silent on his charger.

The Maid of Galloway waved her hand gaily to the younger of the knights.

"You shall have your chance with the rest," she cried; "but you will not care about me then. Very likely I may have to fleech and cozen with you like a sweetie-wife at a fair before either of you will marry me. And you know I have sworn on the bones of Saint Bride to marry none but a Douglas of the Douglases!"

Then William Douglas saluted without a word, and turning his bridle-rein rode away with his face steadfastly set to the north. But James ever cried back farewells and jovial words long after he was out of hearing. And even on the heights of Keltonmuir he still fluttered a gay kerchief in his left hand.

Then Margaret Douglas went back within the gates, where her eyes fell upon Maud Lindesay, coming through the castle yard to meet her. For that morning she had not wished to encounter Sholto—at least not among so many. The two maidens walked on together, and which was the fairer, the black or the nut-brown, none could say who beheld them.

After a while Margaret Douglas sighed.

"I wonder which of them I like the best," she said.

Maud laughed a merry, scornful laugh in which was a world of superior knowledge.

"You do not like either of them very much yet, or you would have no difficulty about the matter!" said this wise woman.

"Well, I wonder which of them loves me best," she went on; "James tells me of it a hundred times every day and all day. But William says nothing. He only looks at me often, as if he disapproved of me. I am over light for him, I trow. He thinks not of me."

Then after a pause she said, again with her finger on her lip, "I wonder which of them would do most for my sake?"

"I know!" said Maud Lindesay, promptly.

* * * * *

With the young Avondales there had ridden forth Malise and his son Laurence on their way to the Abbey of Dulce Cor. Sholto went also with them to convoy them to the fords of Urr.

For Laurence was to be a clerk after all.

And this is the way he explained it.

"The Abbot cannot live long, and there is no Douglas to succeed him. Then your little Maid will make me Abbot, if that Maud of yours does her duty."

"She is not my Maud yet," sighed Sholto. For, as they say in Scotland, the lady had proved "driech to draw up."

"But she will be in good time," urged Laurence, "and she must persuade the Lady Margaret of my many and surprising virtues."

"The Lady Margaret hath doubtless seen these for herself. Were you not bound beside her on the iron altar?" said Sholto.

"Yes, but I dirked the old witch-woman, or so they say. And that was no clerkly action!" objected his brother.

"Fear not," said Sholto, "you have all of her favour you need without working by means of another's petticoat. But how about marrying? You cannot wed or woo if you are a clerk. You did not use to be so unfond of a lass in the gloamings along the sweet strand called the Walk of Lovers—you know where!"

"Pshaw," cried Laurence, "I never yet saw the lass I liked better than myself. And I never expect to see one that I shall like better than the fat revenues of the Abbacy of Dulce Cor!"

He paused a moment as if roguishly considering some point.

"Besides," he went on, "wed I may not, but woo—that is another matter! I have never yet heard that an Abbot—"

"Good-day!" cried Sholto, suddenly, at this point, "I will not stay to hear you blaspheme!"

And leaving his father and Laurence to ride westward he turned him back towards Thrieve.

"I will surely return to-morrow," cried Malise; "I must first see this gay bird safely in mew. Aye, and bid the Abbot William clip his wings too!"

So in the gay morning sunshine and with the reflection of the lift glinting dark blue from tarn and lakelet, Sholto MacKim rode towards the Castle of Thrieve. He bethought him on all that was bygone. The Avondales were gone, James the Gross might die any moment—might even now be dead and William Douglas be Earl in his place!

He thought over William of Avondale's last words to himself, spoken with deep solemnity and in all the dignity of a great spirit.

"Sholto, you and yours have brought to justice the chief betrayer. The time is at hand when, having the power, I will settle with Crichton and Livingston, the lesser villains. And in that count and reckoning you must be my right-hand man. Keep your Countess, the sweet young Margaret, safe for my sake. She is very precious to me—indeed, beyond my life. And for this time fare you well!"

And he had reached a mailed hand to the captain of the Douglas guard, and when Sholto would have bent his head upon it to kiss it, William of Avondale gripped his suddenly as one grasps a comrade's hand when the heart is touched, and so was gone.

At the verge of the flowery pastures that ring the isle of Thrieve, Sholto met Maud Lindesay, wandering alone. At sight of her he leaped from his horse, and, without salutation of spoken speech, walked by her side.

"How came you here alone?" he asked.

Maud made her little pouting movement of the lips, and kicked viciously at a tuft of grass.

"I forgot," she said hypocritically, "I ought to have asked leave of that noble knight the Captain of Thrieve. We poor maids must not breathe without his permission—no, nor even walk out to meet him when we are lonesome."

Maud Lindesay lifted her eyes suddenly and shot at Sholto a glance so disabling, that, alarmed for the consequences, she veiled her eyes again circumspectly by dropping her long lashes upon her cheek.

"Did you really come out to meet me, Maud?" cried Sholto, all the life flooding back into his cheeks, "in this do you speak truth and no mockery?"

"I only said that we maidens were so much in fear of our Castle Governor, that we must not walk out even to meet him!"

At this Sholto let his horse go where it would, and, as they were passing at the time through a coppice of hazel, he caught his saucy sweetheart quickly by the wrist.

"Mistress Maud, you shall not play with me!" he said; "you will tell me plainly—do you love me or do you not?"

Maud Lindesay puckered her pretty face as if she had been about to cry.

"You hurt my arm!" she said plaintively, looking up at him with the long pathetic gaze of a gentle helpless animal undeservedly put in pain.

Sholto perforce released the pressure on her arm. She instantly put both hands behind her.

"You did not hurt me at all—hear you that, Master Sholto," she cried, "and I do not love you—not that much, Sir Noble Bully!"

And she snapped her finger and thumb like a flash beneath his nose.

"Not that much!" she repeated viciously, and did it again. Sholto turned away sternly.

"You are nothing but a silly girl, and not worthy that any true man should either love or marry you!" he said, walking off in the direction of the castle.

Maud Lindesay looked after him a moment as if not believing her eyes and ears. Then, so soon as she made sure that he was indeed not coming back, she tripped quickly after him. He was taking long strides, and it required a series of small hops and skips to keep up with him.

"Not really, Sholto?" she said beseechingly, almost running beside him now. He walked so fast.

"Yes, madam, really!" said that young knight, still more sternly.

She took a little run to get a step in front of him, so that she might advantageously look up into his face.

"Then you will not marry me, Sholto?"

Her hands were clasped with the sweetest petitionary grace.

"No!"

The monosyllable escaped from his lips with a snort like a puff of steam from under the lid of a boiling pot.

"Not even if I ask you very nicely, Sholto?"

"No!"

The negative came again, apparently fiercer than before, almost like an explosion indeed. But still there was a hollow sound about it somewhere.

At this the girl stopped suddenly and, drawing a little lace kerchief from her bosom, she sank her head into it in apparent abandonment of grief.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she wailed, "Sholto says he will not marry me, and I have asked him so sweetly. What shall I do? What shall I do? I will e'en go and drown me in the Dee water!"

And with her kerchief still held to her eyes—or at least (to be wholly accurate) to one of them—the despised maiden ran towards the river bank. She did not run very fast, but still she ran.

Now this was more than Sholto had bargained for, and he in turn pursued her light-foot, swifter than he had ever run in his life. He overtook her just as she reached the little ascent of the rocks by the river margin.

His hand fell upon her shoulder and he turned her round. She was still shaking with sobs—or something.

"I will—I will, I will drown myself!" she cried, her kerchief closer to her eyes.

"I will marry you—I will do anything. I love you, Maud!"

"You do not—you cannot!" she cried, pushing him fiercely away, "you said you would not! That I was not fit to marry."

"I did not mean it—I lied! I did not know what I said! I will do whatever you bid me!" Sholto was grovelling now.

"Then you will marry me—if I do not drown myself?"

She spoke with a sort of relenting, delicious and tentative.

"Yes—yes! When you will—to-morrow—now!"

She dropped the kerchief and the laughing eyes of naughty Maud Lindesay looked suddenly out upon Sholto like sunshine in a dark place. They were dry and full of merriment. Not a trace of tears was to be discerned in either of them.

Then she gave another little skip, and, catching him by the arm, forced him to walk with her toward Castle Thrieve.

"Of course you will marry me, silly! You could not help yourself, Sholto—and it shall be when I like too. But now that you have been so stern and crusty with me, I am not sure that I will not take Landless Jock after all!"

* * * * *

This is the end, and yet not the end. For still, say the country folk, when the leaves are greenest by the lakeside, when the white thorn is whitest and the sun drops most gloriously behind the purpling hills of the west, when the children sing like mavises on the clachan greens, you may chance to spy under the Three Thorns of Carlinwark a lady fairer than mortal eye hath seen. She will be sitting gracefully on a white palfrey and hearkening to the bairns singing by the watersides. And the tears fall down her cheeks as she listens, in the place where in the spring-time of the year young William Douglas first met the Lady Sybilla.

THE END