"They are not the walnuts of my own sunny clime, my lord," said Louise;
"but they hang low, and are within the reach of the poor."

"You shall have something to afford you better fare, poor wandering
ape," said the Duke, in a tone in which feeling predominated more than
in the affected and contemptuous gallantry of his first address to the
glee maiden.

At this moment, as he turned to ask an attendant for his purse, the
Prince encountered the stern and piercing look of a tall black man,
seated on a powerful iron grey horse, who had entered the court with
attendants while the Duke of Rothsay was engaged with Louise, and now
remained stupefied and almost turned to stone by his surprise and anger
at this unseemly spectacle. Even one who had never seen Archibald
Earl of Douglas, called the Grim, must have known him by his swart
complexion, his gigantic frame, his buff coat of bull's hide, and his
air of courage, firmness, and sagacity, mixed with indomitable pride.
The loss of an eye in battle, though not perceptible at first sight, as
the ball of the injured organ remained similar to the other, gave yet a
stern, immovable glare to the whole aspect.

The meeting of the royal son in law with his terrible stepfather
[father in law] was in circumstances which arrested the attention of all
present; and the bystanders waited the issue with silence and suppressed
breath, lest they should lose any part of what was to ensue.

When the Duke of Rothsay saw the expression which occupied the stern
features of Douglas, and remarked that the Earl did not make the
least motion towards respectful, or even civil, salutation, he seemed
determined to show him how little respect he was disposed to pay to his
displeased looks. He took his purse from his chamberlain.

"Here, pretty one," he said, "I give thee one gold piece for the song
thou hast sung me, another for the nuts I have stolen from thee, and a
third for the kiss thou art about to give me. For know, my pretty one,
that when fair lips, and thine for fault of better may be called so,
make sweet music for my pleasure, I am sworn to St. Valentine to press
them to mine."

"My song is recompensed nobly," said Louise, shrinking back; "my nuts
are sold to a good market; farther traffic, my lord, were neither
befitting you nor beseeming me."

"What! you coy it, my nymph of the highway?" said the Prince,
contemptuously. "Know damsel, that one asks you a grace who is unused to
denial."