--the horses? What have they done to the horses? Have they killed
my horses?"

CHAPTER XIII

PLOTS AND PRINCES

But the Duke of Lyonesse was not dead. He lay at the King's Arms in the
town of Newton Douglas, well peppered with slugs, and swearing most
royally. Lord Wargrove was alone in attendance upon him. One might well
pity him, for his job was no pleasant one.

Eben the Spy had disappeared, and with him every stiver of the Prince's
money, which had been kept in a leathern dispatch case carefully stowed
beneath the seat of the carriage. His wallet of jewels, too, had
vanished, so that the poor Duke had never a spare snuff-box or a change
of rings.

More wonderful still was the official declaration made and sworn to
before the Fiscal and Sheriff. The attack had been made entirely for the
purpose of robbery, by Ebenezer McClure and a band of malefactors,
collected by him for the purpose. In proof of which it was shown that
the said Eben McClure had driven the carriage into a trap, previously
laid with care in the dangerous defile of the White Water near where it
enters into the loch of that name, that he had removed the Duke's
treasure during the fight, and so escaped, mounted upon one of the
horses which he had borrowed of his kinsman Kennedy of Supsorrow. The
name of Patsy Ferris did not appear.

This explains why on arriving at Newton Douglas in search of his steeds,
Kennedy McClure found himself pulled down from his horse, treated with
much official roughness, and finally lodged in the townhouse awaiting
his removal to the gaol of Wigton. He began to think that the fifty
pounds which had been paid down by Eben of Stonykirk constituted but a
feeble consolation for losses such as his. The Duke could not see him.
My Lord of Wargrove would not, and Captain Laurence, to whom in
desperation he made his plea, consigned him with extreme conciseness of
speech to the deepest and hottest pit of Eblis.

All these things made no considerable stir in the little village of
Newton Douglas, which was beginning to extend itself under the heights
of Penninghame. The borough was proud of its guest, but what the Duke
and his hench-man desired most of all was to be safely across Cree
Bridge and to place a county or two between them and the wrath of Adam
Ferris and his brother-in-law Julian Wemyss, whom they held to be
answerable for the attack at the White Loch. So as soon as the wounded
man could be moved, the best hor