in, and stumbled, throwing me
clean over his head, and again when I missed the track, and rode
straight into the bog Allison had warned me about, and in which the
little beast was near sticking altogether, and I lost a good hour
getting him to firm land and finding the track again.

The bright morning sun was showing above the Eastern horizon before I
left the weary hills behind me, but it was easy work to ride down the
sloping banks of the Allan, and soon I came to the wooded valley of the
Teviot.

Urging on my tired pony, I cantered down the level haughs which lay by
the river side, and it was not long before Branksome came in sight, a
high square house, with many rows of windows, flanked by a massive
square tower at each corner.

I rode up to the great doorway through an avenue of beeches and knocked
timidly on the wrought-iron knocker, for I had never been to such a big
house in my life before, and I felt that I made but a sorry figure,
splashed as I was with mud from head to foot.

The old seneschal who came to the door seemed to think so too, for he
looked me up and down with a broad grin on his face before he asked who
I was, and on what business I had come.

"To see my Lord of Buccleuch, and carry a message to him from William
Armstrong of Kinmont," I replied, with as much dignity as I could
muster, for the fellow's smile angered me, and I feared that he might
not think it worth his while to tell the Warden of my arrival.

"Then thou shalt see Sir Walter at once, young sir, if thou wilt walk
this way," said the man, mimicking my voice good-naturedly, and,
hitching my pony's bridle to an iron ring in the door-post, he led me
along a stone passage, straight into a great vaulted hall, in the centre
of which stood a long wooden table, with a smaller one standing
crossways on a dais at its head.

A crowd of squires and men-at-arms stood round the lower table, laughing
and jesting as they helped themselves with their hunting knives to
slices from the huge joints, or quaffed great tankards of ale, while up
at the top sat my Lord of Buccleuch himself, surrounded by his knights,
and waited on by smart pages in livery, boys about my own age.

As the old seneschal appeared in the doorway there was a sudden silence,
while he announced in a loud voice that a messenger had arrived from
William Armstrong of Kinmont; but when he stepped aside, and everyone
saw that the messenger was only a little eleven-years-old lad,