f and waved them aside.

"God--He is the God," she said, looking upwards into the black night.
"In one day He has made me a woman solitary and without children. Sons
and daughter He has taken from me. But He shall not break my heart.
No, not even He. Stand up, Malise MacKim, and tell me how these things
came to pass."

And there in the blown reek of torches and the hush of the courtyard
of Thrieve Malise told all the tale of the Black Dinner and the fatal
morning, of the short shrift and the matchless death, while around him
strong men sobbed and lifted up right hands to swear the eternal
vengeance.

But alone and erect as a banner staff stood the mother of the dead.
Her eyes were dry, her lips compressed, her nostrils a little
distended like those of a war-horse that sniffs the battle from afar.
Outside the castle wall the news spread swiftly, and somewhere in the
darkness a voice set up the Celtic keen.

"Bid that woman hold her peace. I will hear the news and then we will
cry the slogan. Say on, Malise!"

Then the smith told how his horse had broken down time and again, how
he had pressed on, running and resting, stripped almost naked that he
might keep up with his son, because that no ordinary charger could
long carry his great weight.

Then when he had finished the Lady of Thrieve turned to Sholto--"And
you, captain of the guard, what have you done, and wherefore left you
your master in his hour of need?"

Then succinctly and to the point Sholto spoke, his father and Laurence
assenting and confirming as he told of the Earl's commission and of
how he had accomplished those things that were laid upon him.

"It is well," said the lady, calmly, "and now I also will tell you
something that you do not know. My little daughter, whom ye call the
Fair Maid of Galloway, with her companion, Mistress Maud Lindesay,
went out more than twelve hours agone to the holt by the ford to
gather hazelnuts, and no eye of man or woman hath seen them since."

And, even as she spoke, there passed a quick strange pang through the
heart of Sholto. He remembered the warning of the Lady Sybilla. Had he
once more come too late?

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE GIFT OF THE COUNTESS

It was the Countess of Douglas who commanded that night in the Castle
of Thrieve. Sholto wished to start at once upon the search for the
lost maidens. But the lady forbade him.

"There are a thousand searchers who during the night will do all that
you cou