you, my lady and my love," he cried, in a voice loud and
clear.

Then, touching but the rim of the goblet with his lips, he poured out
the red wine upon the ground.

* * * * *

And thus passed the gallantest gentleman and truest lover in whom God
ever put heart of grace to live courteously and die greatly, keeping
his faith in his lady even against herself, and holding death itself
sweet because that in death she loved him.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE RISING OF THE DOUGLASES

It was upon the Earl's own charger, Black Darnaway, that Sholto rode
southward to raise to their chief's assistance the greatest and
compactest clan that ever, even in Scotland, had done the bidding of
one man.

The young man's heart was high and hopeful within him. The King's
guardians dared not, so he told himself, let aught befall the puissant
Douglases in the Castle of Edinburgh, without trial and under cover of
the most courteous hospitality.

"Try the Earl of Douglas!" so Sholto thought within him. He laughed at
the notion. "Why, Earl William could by a word bring a hundred
thousand men of Galloway and the Marches to make a fitting jury."

So he meditated, his thoughts running fast and fiery to the beating of
Black Darnaway's feet as he climbed the heathery slopes which led
towards Douglasdale. Day was breaking as he rode down to the town of
Lanark yet asleep and smokeless in the caller airs of the morn. At the
gates of this frontier town he delivered his first summons of
feudality. For the burghers of Lanark were liegemen of the Douglases
of Douglasdale, and were (though not with much good-will) bound to
furnish service at call.

Sholto had some difficulty in making himself heard athwart the
ponderous wooden gates, bossed with leather and studded with iron. At
first he shouted angrily to the silences, but presently nearer and
nearer came a bellow as of a brazen bull, thunderous and far echoing.

"Fower o' the clock and a braw, braw morning."

It was Grice Elshioner, watchman of the town of Lanark, evidencing to
the magistrates and lieges thereof that he was earning his three
shillings in the week--a handsome wage in these hard times, and one
well able to provide belly-timber for himself and also for the wife
and weans who, dwelling in a close off the High-street, were called by
his name.

Sholto thundered again upon the rugged portal.

"Open there! Open, I say, in the name of the Earl of Dou