than I had been a tripping
hedge-sparrow.

"We had a difference, and cast up our fathers to one another," at last
said Inglis, half sullenly.

"It were best to let fathers a-be when you ride on his Majesty's outpost
duty, Cornet Inglis. But you are wounded. Fall out and have your hurt
examined."

"It is a flea-bite," quoth Peter Inglis, stoutly.

"A man this!" thought I. For I loved courage.

Yet nevertheless, he dismounted, and John Scarlet helped him off with
his coat upon the short heather of the brae-face.

"And whom may we have here?" cried Claverhouse, as Inglis went
stumblingly to the hillside upon the arm of John Scarlet. He turned his
fine dark eyes full upon me as he spoke, and I thought that I had never
seen any man look so handsome. Yet, for all that, fear of the great
enemy of our house and cause sat cold in my vitals. Though I deny not
that his surpassing beauty of person took my eye as though I had been a
woman--the more perhaps because I had little enough of my own.

But my kinsman Wat Gordon was no whit dismayed. He dusted his silken
doublet front, swept his white-feathered hat in the air in reverence,
and introduced me to the formidable captain as one that has good
standing and knows it well:

"My cousin, William Gordon, younger son of the House of Earlstoun!"

"Ah," said Claverhouse, smiling upon me not so ill-pleased, "I have
heard of him--the home stayer, the nest-egg. He that rode not to
Bothwell with 'the Earl'[3] and 'the Bull.' Whither rides he now thus
early?"

[Footnote 3: The laird of Earlstoun was often called in jest "the
Earl."]

"He rides, Colonel Graham, to bury his father."

I thought my cousin was too bold thus to blurt out my mission, to the
chief of them that had killed him whom I went to seek, but he was wiser
than I in this matter.

Claverhouse smiled, and looked from the one to the other of us.

"You Gordons have your own troubles to get your fathers buried," he
said. "I suppose you will claim that this cub also is a good King's
man?"

"He is well affected, colonel," said Lochinvar gaily; "and there are
none too many likeminded with him in these parts!"

"Even the affectation does him monstrous credit," quoth Clavers,
clapping Walter on the shoulder; "it is much for a Gordon in this
country to affect such a virtue as loyalty. I wonder," he went on,
apparently to himself, "if it would be possible to transplant you
Gordons, that are such arrant rebels here and