me to name the word combat,"
said Ramorny, "ere I would have accepted it. But I am not at present fit
to hold a lance."

"I am glad of it, under your favour, Sir John. There will be the less
bloodshed," said the King. "You must therefore produce your followers
according to your steward's household book, in the great church of
St. John, that, in presence of all whom it may concern, they may purge
themselves of this accusation. See that every man of them do appear at
the time of high mass, otherwise your honour may be sorely tainted."

"They shall attend to a man," said Sir John Ramorny.

Then bowing low to the King, he directed himself to the young Duke of
Rothsay, and, making a deep obeisance, spoke so as to be heard by him
alone. "You have used me generously, my lord! One word of your lips
could have ended this controversy, and you have refused to speak it."

"On my life," whispered the Prince, "I spake as far as the extreme verge
of truth and conscience would permit. I think thou couldst not expect
I should frame lies for thee; and after all, John, in my broken
recollections of that night, I do bethink me of a butcherly looking
mute, with a curtal axe, much like such a one as may have done yonder
night job. Ha! have I touched you, sir knight?"

Ramorny made no answer, but turned as precipitately as if some one had
pressed suddenly on his wounded arm, and regained his lodgings with
the Earl of Crawford; to whom, though disposed for anything rather than
revelry, he was obliged to offer a splendid collation, to acknowledge
in some degree his sense of the countenance which the young noble had
afforded him.

CHAPTER XXII.

In pottingry he wrocht great pyne;
He murdreit mony in medecyne.

DUNBAR.

When, after an entertainment the prolonging of which was like torture to
the wounded knight, the Earl of Crawford at length took horse, to go
to his distant quarters in the Castle of Dupplin, where he resided as
a guest, the Knight of Ramorny retired into his sleeping apartment,
agonized by pains of body and anxiety of mind. Here he found Henbane
Dwining, on whom it was his hard fate to depend for consolation in both
respects. The physician, with his affectation of extreme humility, hoped
he saw his exalted patient merry and happy.

"Merry as a mad dog," said Ramorny, "and happy as the wretch whom the
cur hath bitten, and who begins to feel the approach of the ravening
madness! That ruthless boy,