ossible that the beast he had seen might have emerged. He was wholly
unsuccessful in discovering anything suspicious, and had almost
resolved to station himself at the turn of the staircase which led
down from the roof, when, looking back, at the sharp click of a latch,
he saw Maud Lindesay coming out of the chamber of the little Maid of
Galloway.

Softly closing the door behind her, she paused a moment as if
undecided, and then more with her chin than with her finger she
beckoned him to approach.

"She sleeps," said the girl, softly, "but so uncertainly and with so
many startings of terror, that I will not leave her alone. Will you
aid me to remove the mattress of my couch and lay it on the floor
beside her?"

Sholto signified his willingness. His mind was more than ever
oppressed by the thought that the Earl of Douglas loved this girl,
whom he had found listening to his jests with such frank joyousness.

Maud stayed him with one of the long looks out from under her
eyelashes. The dark violet orbs rested upon him a moment reproachfully
with a hurt expression in their depths, and were then dropped with a
sigh.

"You are still angry with me," she said, a little wistfully, "and I
wanted to tell you how happy it made me--made us, I mean--when we
heard that you were to be captain of the castle-guard instead of that
grumbling old curmudgeon, Jock of Abernethy."

The heart of Sholto was instantly melted, more by her looks than by
her words, though deep within him he had still an angry feeling that
he was being played with. All the same, and in spite of his resolves,
the eyeshot from under those dark and sweeping lashes did its usual
and deadly work.

"I did not know that aught which might befall me could be anything to
Mistress Maud Lindesay," said Sholto, with the last shreds of dignity
in his voice.

"I said not to me, but to _us_," she corrected, smiling; "but tell me
what think you of this appearance which has so startled our Margaret.
Was it ghost or goblin or dream of the night? We have never had either
witch or warlock about the house of Thrieve since the old Abbot Gawain
laid the ghost of Archibald the Grim with four-and-forty masses, said
without ever breaking his fast, down there in the castle chapel."

"Nay, ask me not," answered Sholto, "I am little skilled in matters
spiritual. I should try sword point and arrowhead on such gentry, and
if these do them no harm, why then I think they will not distress