“There,” he said, smiling at the girl who had followed behind him, “I will lock her in with you and take the key, that I may make sure of two such uncertain charges.”

But the girl had deftly extracted the key even as she passed in after him, and as the bolts shot from within she cried:  “I thank you right courteously, Lord William, but mine apothecary, fearing that the air of this isle of Thrieve might not agree with me, bade me ever to sleep with the key of the door under my pillow.  Against fevers and quinsies, cold iron is a sovereign specific.”

And for all his wounded heart, Earl William smiled at the girl’s sauciness as he went slowly back to his chamber, taking, in spite of his earldom, pains to pass his mother’s door on tiptoe.

CHAPTER VII

THE DOUGLAS MUSTER

The day of the great weapon-showing broke fair and clear after the storm of the night.  The windows of heaven had had all their panes cleaned, and even after it was daylight the brighter stars appeared—­only, however, to wink out again when the sun arose and shone on the wet fields, coming forth rejoicing like a bridegroom from his chamber.

And equally bright and strong came forth the young Earl, every trace of the anger and disappointment of the night having been removed from his face, if not from his mind, by the recreative and potent sleep of youth and health.

In the hall he called for Sir John of Abernethy, nicknamed Landless Jock.

“Conduct my uncle the Abbot from the chapel where he has been all night at his devotions, to his chamber, and furnish him with what he may require, and bring up Malise the Smith from the dungeon.  Let him come into my presence in the upper hall.”

William Douglas went into a large oak-ceiled chamber, wide and high, running across the castle from side to side, and with windows that looked every way over the broad and fertile strath of Dee.

Presently, with a trampling of mailed feet and the double rattle which denoted the grounding of a pair of steel-hilted partisans, Malise was brought to the door by two soldiers of the Earl’s outer guard.

The huge bulk of Brawny Kim filled up the doorway almost completely, and he stood watching the Douglas with an unmoved gravity which, in the dry wrinkles about his eyes, almost amounted to humorous appreciation of the situation.

Yet it was Malise who spoke first.  For at his appearance the Earl had turned his back upon his retainer, and now stood at the window that looks towards the north, from which he could see, over the broad and placid stretches of the river, the men putting up the pavilions and striking spears into the ground to mark out the spaces for the tourney of the next day.