ght on our mother's
loneliness. She will miss me sore, for she fleeched and pled with me
not to come, yet I would not listen to her."

Sholto stood by the door, erect as if on duty at Thrieve.

"Come and sit with us," said the Earl William kindly to him, "we are
no more master and servant, earl and esquire. We are but three youths
that are to die together, and the axe's edge levels all. You, Sholto,
are in some good chance to live the longest of the three by some half
score of minutes. I am glad I made you a knight on the field of
honour, Sir Sholto, for then they cannot hang you to a bough, like a
varlet caught stealing the King's venison."

Sholto slowly came over to the window-seat and stood there
respectfully as before, with his arms straight at his side, feeling
more than anything else the lack of his sword-hilt to set his right
hand upon.

"Nay, but do as I bid you," said the Earl, looking up at him; "sit
down, Sholto."

And Sholto sat on the window-seat and looked forth upon the lights
leaping out one after another down among the crowded gables of the
town as this and that burgher lit lamp or lantern at the nearing of
the hour of supper.

Far away over the shore-lands the narrow strip of the Forth showed
amethystine and mysterious, and farther out still the coast of Fife
lay in a sort of opaline haze.

"I wonder," said William Douglas, after a long pause, "what they have
done with our good lads. Had they been taken or perished we had surely
heard more noise, I warrant. Two score lads of Galloway would not give
up their arms without a tulzie for it."

"They might induce them to leave them behind, when they went out to
take their pleasures among the maids of the Lawnmarket," said Sholto.

"Not their swords," said the Earl, "it needed all your lord's commands
to make yours quit your side. I warrant these fellows will give an
excellent account of themselves."

Presently the night fell darker, and a smurr of rain drifted over from
the edges of Pentland, mostly passing high above, but with lower
fringes that dragged, as it were, on the Castle Rock and the Hill of
Calton.

The three young men were still silently looking out when suddenly from
the darkness underneath there came a low voice.

"'Ware window!" it said, "stand back there above."

To Sholto the words sounded curiously familiar, and almost without
thinking what he did, he seized the Earl and his brother and dragged
them away from the wide spa