e, being full of all
self-sufficience."

"Sholto--yes; he is his father's son and fought well. He is a MacKim,
and cannot do otherwise. He will make a good knight, and, by Saint
Bride, I will dub him one, ere this sun set, for his valiant laying on
of the axe this day."

The great muster was now over. The tents which had been dotted thickly
athwart the castle island were already mostly struck, and the ground
was littered with miscellaneous debris, soon to be carried off in
trail carts with square wooden bodies set on boughs of trees, and
flung into the river, by the Earl's varlets and stablemen.

The multitudinous liegemen of the Douglas were by this time streaming
homewards along every mountain pass. Over the heather and through the
abounding morasses horse and foot took their way, no longer marching
in military order, as when they came, but each lance taking the route
which appeared the shortest to himself. North, east, and west
spear-heads glinted and armour flashed against the brown of the
heather and the green of the little vales, wherein the horses bent
their heads to pull at the meadow hay as their riders sought the
nearest way back again to their peel-towers and forty-shilling lands.

It was at the great gate of Thrieve that the Earl called aloud for
Sholto. He had been speaking to his cousin William, a strong, silent
man, whose repute was highest for good counsel among all the branches
of the house of Douglas.

Sholto came forward from the head of his archer guard with a haste
which betrayed his anxiety lest in some manner he had exceeded his
duty. The Earl bade him kneel down. A little behind, the young
Douglases of Avondale, William, James, and Hugh, sat their horses,
while the boy David, who had been left at home to keep the castle,
looked forth disconsolately from the window of the great hall. On the
steps stood the little Maid Margaret and her companion, Maud Lindesay,
who had come down to meet the returning train of riders. And, truth to
tell, that was what Sholto cared most about. He did not wish to be
disgraced before them all.

So as he knelt with an anxious countenance before his lord, the Earl
took his cousin William's sword out of his hand, and, laying it on the
shoulder of Sholto MacKim, he said, "Great occasions bring forth good
men, and even one battle tries the temper of the sword. You, Sholto,
have been quickly tried, but thy father hath been long tempering you.
Three days agone you wer