tair and himself. Louis de Raincy himself was
"of as good blood as the King, only not so rich," as say the Spaniards.
But this restless, stern-visaged Stair Garland, with his curious Viking
fixity of gaze, what was his position towards Patsy? Was it all only
friendship for the confidante of his sister? Louis Raincy's own hopes
and purposes were of the vaguest. He did not even know whether he
himself loved Patsy, but he was quite clear on the chapter of nobody
else having her if he could help it.

CHAPTER IX

HIS LIFE IN HIS HAND

Louis Raincy rode right up to the door of Ladykirk and asked to see Miss
Aline, with whom he had always been a great favourite. As a boy he had
loved to play about her shrubberies. He remembered still the quaint
smell of the damp pine-needles on the ground, the bitterness of laurel
leaves which he broke across the centre and nibbled at, and above all,
the long pleasant days of Miss Aline's jam-making, when he skirmished in
and out and all about the kitchen and pantry, getting in everybody's
way. Why, his very breath smelled sweet to himself after he had cleaned
out brass pan after brass pan, with that worn spoon of horn warranted
not to scratch, kept and supplied by Miss Aline for the purpose.

Now he was grown up. School and college had passed him by, and much to
his own astonishment had left him in many ways as much a boy as ever. He
had not been allowed to enter either of the fighting services, so he
took what of adventure the country afforded--the rustic merry-making of
the "Kirn" in the days of harvest home, the coastwise adventure of
ships, and the midnight raid of the Free Traders with their clanking
keg-irons and long defiles of pack horses crowning the fells and bending
away towards the North star and safety.

Now Miss Aline greeted him cheerfully as he came in through the great
doors of the courtyard which had been shut that morning for the first
time since her father's funeral.

"Ah, Louis," she cried at sight of him, "it is easy to guess what brings
you to my door so early in the morning. It is long since the days of the
brass preserving-pan. Laddie, I'm feared that 'tis quite another
berrying of sweets which brings you so fast and so far!"

"Miss Aline," said the lad, with a frankness which made the good
chatelaine like him the better, "I rode over to see Patsy Ferris. I must
hear what all this is about the Duke of Lyonesse."

"Nothing, so far as I can hear, Louis,