with a gallant wave of
his hand) "in the case of a lady so fair and tempting as Dame Barbara
MacKim!"

At this the dame cast up her hands and her eyes again. "Eh, what will
Marget Ahanny o' the Shankfit say noo--this frae the Yerl William. Eh,
sirce, this is better than an Abbot's absolution. I declare 'tis mair
sustainin' than a' the consolations o' religion. Malise, do you hear,
great dour cuif that ye are, what says my lord? And you to think so
little of your married wife as ye do! Think shame, you being what ye
are, and me the ain sister to that master o' merchandise and Bailie o'
Dumfries, Maister Ninian Halliburton o' the Vennel!"

And with that she vanished into the black oblong of the door opposite
the smithy.

CHAPTER II

MY FAIR LADY

The strong man of Carlinwark made no long job of the horseshoeing.
For, as he hammered and filed, he marked the eye of the young Earl
restlessly straying this way and that along the green riverside paths,
and his fingers nervously tapping the ashen casing of the smithy
window-sill. Malise MacKim smiled to himself, for he had not served a
Douglas for thirty years without knowing by these signs that there was
the swing of a kirtle in the case somewhere.

Presently the last nail was made firm, and Black Darnaway was led,
passaging and tossing his bridle reins, out upon the green sward.
Malise stood at his head till the Douglas swung himself into the
saddle with a motion light as the first upward flight of a bird.

He put his hand into a pocket in the lining of his "soubreveste" and
took out a golden "Lion" of the King's recent mintage. He spun it in
the air off his thumb and then looked at it somewhat contemptuously as
he caught it.

"I think you and I, Master-Armourer, could send out a better coinage
than that with the old Groat press over there at Thrieve!" he said.

Malise smiled his quiet smile.

"If the Earl of Douglas deigns to make me the master of his mint, I
promise him plenty of good, sound, broad pieces of a noble
design--that is, till Chancellor Crichton hangs me for coining in the
Grassmarket of Edinburgh."

"That would he never, with the Douglas lances to prick you a way out
and the Douglas gold to buy the good-will of traitorous judges!"

Half unconsciously the Earl sighed as he looked at the fair lake
growing rosy in the light of the sunset. His boyish face was
overspread with care, and for the moment seemed all too young to have
inherited so