rate," he meditated with a slight return of complacency, as he
butted and shoved his way castle-wards, "he can scarcely mean to have
my head. For he was all day with my father at his elbow, and at the
worst I shall have another chance of seeing"--he did not call the
beloved by her Christian name even to himself, so he compromised by
adding somewhat lamely--"_her_."

Thus Sholto, putting speed in his heels and swinging along over the
trampled sward with the easy tireless trot of a sleuthhound, threaded
his way among the groups of villein prickers and swearing men-at-arms
who cumbered the main approaches of the castle.

He found the Earl walking swiftly up and down a little raised platform
which extended round three sides of Thrieve, outside the main
defences, but yet within the nether moat, the sluggish water of which
it over-looked on its inner side.

Earl William was manifestly discomposed and excited by the events of
the day, and especially by the fact that the Lady Sybilla seemed
utterly unconscious of ever having set eyes upon him before, appearing
entirely oblivious of having received him in a pavilion of
rose-coloured silk under the shelter of a grove of tall pines. The
young lord instinctively recoiled from any communication with his
master armourer, whose grave and impassive face revealed nothing which
might be passing in his mind. Then the Earl's thoughts turned upon
Sholto, who had been the first to observe his beauteous companion of
the Carlinwark woods.

Earl William was even younger than Sholto, but the cares and dignities
of a great position had rendered him far less boyish in manner and
carriage than the son of Malise MacKim.

His head, now released from his helm, rose out from the richly
ornamented collar of his armour with the grace of a flower and the
strength of a tree rooted among rocks. He had already laid aside his
gorget, and when Sholto was announced, the Earl's ancient retainer,
old Landless Jock of Abernethy, was bringing him a cap of soft velvet
which he threw on the back of his head with an air of supreme
carelessness. Then he rose and walked up and down, carrying his armour
as if it had been a mere feather weight, whereas it was tilting
harness of double plate and designed only for wearing on horseback.

Sholto marked in the young lord a boyish eagerness equal to his own.
Indeed, his impatient manner recalled his late feelings, as he had
stood on the bridge and desired to be left alo