“Did she not prophesy to you that to-day you would be Duke of Touraine, and receive the ambassadors of the King of France?”

“Well,” said the Earl, “where is your wit that you give ear to such babblings?  Did she not come from that country, as I tell you, and who should hear the latest news more readily than she?”

The smith looked a little nonplussed, but stuck to it stoutly that none but a witch woman would ride alone at nightfall upon a Galloway moor, or unless by enchantment set up a pavilion of silk and strange devices under the pines of Loch Roan.

“Well,” said Earl William, feeling his advantage and making the most of it, “I see that in all my little love affairs I must needs take my master armourer with me to decide whether or no the lady be a witch.  He shall resolve for me all spiritual questions with his forehammer.  Malise MacKim a witch pricker!  Ha—­this is a change indeed.  Malise the Smith will make the censor of his lord’s love affairs, after what certain comrades of his have told me of his own ancient love-makings.  Will he deign to come to the weapon-showing to-day, and instead of examining the swords and halberts, the French arbalasts and German fusils, demit that part of his office to Ninian the Highlandman, and go peering into ladies’ eyes for sorceries and scanning their lips for such signs of the devil as lurk in the dimples of their chins?  In this he will find much employment and that of a congenial sort.”

Malise was vanquished, less by the sarcasm of the Earl than by the fear that perhaps the Highlandman might indeed have his place of honour as chief military expert by his master’s right hand at the examination of weapons that day on the green holms of Balmaghie.

“I may have been overhasty, my lord,” he said hesitatingly, “but still do I think that the woman was far from canny.”

The Earl laughed and, turning him about by the shoulders, gave him a push down the stair, crying, “Oh, Malise, Malise, have you lived so long in the world without finding out that a beautiful woman is always uncanny!”

The levy that day of clansmen owning fealty to the Douglas was no hasty or local one.  It was not, indeed, a “rising of the countryside,” such as took place when the English were reported to be over the border, when the beacon fires were thrown west from Criffel to Screel, from Screel to Cairnharrow, and then tossed northward by the three Cairnsmuirs and topmost Merrick far over the uplands of Kyle, till from the sullen brow of Brown Carrick the bale fire set the town drum of Ayr beating its alarming note.  Still this muster was a day on which every Douglas vassal must ride in mail with all his spears behind him—­or bide at home and take the consequences.