’With your favour, Sir Squire, I say, bind each man his horse to a tree.  The skene and broadsword, which I see you all wear, will be ten times as effective on foot.’

‘Do as the knight bids,’ said Malcolm, starting forth with colour on his cheek, light in his eye, that made him another being.  ’In him there is help.’

‘Ay, ay, Lord Malcolm,’ muttered Halbert; ’you need not tell me that:  I know my duty better than not to do the bidding of a belted knight, and pretty man too of his inches.’

The two attendants of Sir James were meantime apparently uttering some remonstrance, to which he lightly replied, ’Tut, Nigel; it will do thine heart good to hew down a minion of Albany.  What were I worth could I not strike a blow against so foul a wrong to my own orphan kindred?  Brewster, I’ll answer it to thy master.  These are his foes, as well as those of all honest men.  Ha! thou art as glad to be at them as I myself.’

By this time he had exchanged his cap for a steel helmet, and was assuming the command as his natural right, as he placed the men in their ambush behind the knoll, received reports from those he had set to watch, and concerted the signal with Halbert and his own followers.  Malcolm kept by him, shivering with intense excitement and eagerness; and thus they waited till the horses’ hoofs and clank of armour were distinctly audible.  But even then Sir James, with outstretched hand, signed his followers back, and kept them in the leash, as it were, until the troop was fairly in the valley, those in front beginning to halt to give their horses water.  They were, in effect, riding somewhat carelessly, and with the ease of men whose feat was performed, and who expected no more opposition.  Full in the midst was Lilias, entirely muffled and pinioned by a large plaid drawn closely round her, and held upon the front of the saddle of a large tall horse, ridden by a slender, light-limbed, wiry groom, whom Malcolm knew as Christopher Hall, a retainer of the Duke of Albany; and beside him rode her captor, Sir Walter Stewart, a man little above twenty, but with a bronzed, hardened, reckless expression that made him look much older, and of huge height and giant build.  Malcolm knew him well, and regarded him with unmitigated horror and dread, both from the knowledge of his ruffianly violence even towards his father, from fear of his intentions, and from the misery that his brutal jests, scoffs, and practical jokes had often personally inflicted:  and the sight of his sister in the power of this wicked man was the realization of all his worst fears.  But ere there was time for more than one strong pang of consternation and constitutional terror, Sir James’s shout of ’St. Andrew for the right!’ was ringing out, echoed by all the fifteen in ambush with him, as simultaneously they leapt forward.  Malcolm, among the first, darting with one spring, as it were, to the horse where his sister was carried, seized