no saint, I warrant you, but, for a
sinner, a bonny lass and a merry. As a gentleman I deem this fair
stratagem of war. If I were your own brother,--the Saints have his soul
in their keeping,--I would still be of this counsel. Will you, my lad?"

He looked so sad, and yet withal so comical, that I held out my hand to
him, laughing.

"Disguise me as you will," I said, "I have gone mumming as Maid Marion
before now, in the Robin Hood play, at St. Andrews"; and as I spoke, I
saw the tall thatched roofs of South Street, and the Priory Gates open,
the budding elms above the garden wall of St. Leonard's, and all the May-
day revel of a year agone pouring out into the good town.

"You speak like yourself now, bless your beardless face! Come forth," he
said, taking a long pull at a tankard,--"that nothing might be
wasted,"--and so we went to quarters, and Randal trudged off, soon coming
back, laughing, with the red kirtle. Our men had been very busy
furbishing up the red cross of St. George on their breasts, and stripping
themselves of any sign of our own colours. As for my busking, never had
maid such rough tire-women; but by one way or another, the apparel was
accommodated, and they all said that, at a little distance of ground, the
English would be finely fooled, and must deem that the Maid herself was
being led to them captive.

It was now in the small hours of morning, dark, save for the glimmer of
stars, here and there in a cloudy sky. Father Urquhart himself went up
to the roof of the mill, to say his orisons, having with him certain
faggots of pitch-wood, for lighting the beacon-fires if need were; and,
as it chanced, braziers to this end stood ready on the roof, as is custom
on our own Border keeps.

We Scots, a hundred in all, in English colours, with three or four as
prisoners, in our own badges, fared cautiously, and with no word spoken,
through dewy woods, or lurking along in dry ditches where best we might,
towards the St. Denis Gate of Paris. I had never been on a night
surprise or bushment before, and I marvelled how orderly the others kept,
as men used to such work, whereas I went stumbling and blindlings. At
length, within sight of the twinkling lights of Paris, and a hundred
yards or thereby off the common way, we were halted in a little wood, and
bidden to lie down; no man was so much as to whisper. Some slept, I
know, for I heard their snoring, but for my part, I never was less in
love with s