think, the head of the other Douglas House," said the Lady
Sybilla, glancing up at the stern and unbending Master of Avondale.

"There is but one house of Douglas, and but one head thereof," replied
Lord William, with a certain severity, and without looking at her. The
lady had the grace to blush, either with shame or with annoyance at
the rebuff.

"Pardon," she said, "you must remember that I am a foreigner. I do not
understand your genealogies. I thought that even in France I had heard
of the Black Douglas and the Red."

"The Red and the Black alike are the liegemen of William of Douglas,
whom Angus and Avondale both have the honour of serving," answered he,
still more uncompromisingly.

"Aye," cried the jovial James, "cousin Will is the only chief, and
will make a rare lance when he hath eaten a score or two more bolls of
meal."

The Earl William returned even as James was speaking.

"What is that I hear about bolls of meal?" he said; "what wots this
fair damosel of our rude Scots measures for oats and bear? You talk
like the holder of a twenty-shilling land, James."

"I was saying," answered James Douglas, "that you would be a proper
man of your lance when you had laid a score or two bolls of good
Galloway meal to your ribs. English beef and beer are excellent, and
drive a lance home into an unarmed foe; but it needs good Scots oats
at the back of the spear-haft to make the sparks fly when knight meets
with knight and iron rings on iron."

"Indeed, cousin Jamie," said the Earl, "you have some right to your
porridge, for this day you have overturned well nigh a score of good
knights and come off unhurt and unashamed. Cousin William, how liked
you the whammel you got from James' lance in your final course?"

"Not that ill," said the silent Master; "I am indeed better at taking
than at giving. James is a stouter lance than I shall ever be--"

"Not so," cried jolly James. "Our Will never doth himself justice. He
is for ever reading Deyrolles and John Froissard in order to learn new
ways and tricks of fence, which he practises on the tilting ground,
instead of riding with a tight knee and the weight of his body behind
the shaft of ash. That is what drives the tree home, and so he gets
many a coup. Yet to fall, and to be up and at it again, is by far the
truer courage."

The Lady Sybilla laughed, as it seemed, heartily, yet with some little
bitterness in the sound of it.

"I declare you Douglases stick toge