ther like crabs in a basket.
Cousins in France do not often love each other so well. You are
fortunate in your relations, my Lord Duke."

"Indeed, and that I am," cried the young man, joyously. "Here be my
cousins, William and James--Will ever ready to read me out of wise
books and advise me better than any clerk, Jamie aching to drive lance
through any man's midriff in my quarrel."

"Lord, I would that I had the chance!" cried James. "Saint Bride! but
I would make a hole clean through him and out at the back, though my
elbuck should dinnle for a week after."

So talking together, but with the lady riding more silent and somewhat
constrainedly in their midst, the three cousins of Douglas passed the
drawbridge and came again to the precincts of the noble towers of
Thrieve.

* * * * *

In an hour Sholto followed them, having ridden fast and furious across
the long broomy braes of Boreland, and wet the fringes of his
charger's silken coverture by vaingloriously swimming the Dee at the
castle pool instead of going round by the fords. This he did in the
hope that Maud Lindesay might see him. And so she did; for as he came
round by the outside of the moat, making his horse caracole and
thinking no little of himself, he heard a voice from an upper window
call out: "Sholto MacKim, Maudie says that you look like a draggled
crow. No, I will not be silent."

Then the words were shut off as if a hand had been set over the mouth
which spoke. But presently the voice out of the unseen came again:
"And I hate you, Sholto MacKim. For we have had to keep in our chamber
this livelong day, because of the two men you have placed over us, as
if we had been prisoners in Black Archibald.[1] This very day I am
going to ask my brother to hang Black Andro and John his brother on
the dule tree of Carlinwark."

[Footnote 1: The pet name of the deepest dungeon of Castle Thrieve,
yet extant and plain to be seen by all.]

"Yes, indeed, and most properly," cried another voice, which made his
very heart flutter, "and set his new captain of the guard a-dangle in
the midst, decked out from head to foot in peacocks' feathers."

Sholto was very angry, for like a boy he took not chaffing lightly,
and had neither the harshness of hide which can endure the rasping of
a woman's tongue, nor the quickness of speech to give her the counter
retort.

So he cast the reins of his horse to a stable varlet and stamped
indoors