e
taking off their bonnets to the boy who, in name at least, was their
sovereign and overlord.

"Hurrah!" cried the lad, as he circled about them, reckless and
irresponsible as a sea-gull, "I am so glad, so very glad you have
come. I like you because you are so bold and young. I have none about
me like you. You will teach me to ride a tourney. I have been hearing
all about yours at Thrieve from the Lady Sybilla. I wish you had asked
me. But now we shall be friends, and I will come and stay long months
with you all together--that is, if my mother will let me."

All this the young King shouted as he ranged alongside of the two
brothers, and rode with them towards the city.

King James II. of Scotland was at this time an open-hearted boy, with
no evident mark of the treachery and jealous fury which afterwards
distinguished him as a man. The schooling of Livingston, his tutor,
had not yet perverted his mind (as it did too soon afterwards), and he
welcomed the young Douglases as the embodiment of all that was great
and knightly, noble and gallant, in his kingdom.

"Yesterday," he began, as soon as he had subdued the ardour of his
frolicsome little steed to a steadier gait, varied only by an
occasional curvet, "yesterday I was made to read in the Chronicles of
the Kings of Scotland, and lo, it was the Douglas did this and the
Douglas said that, till I cried out upon Master Kennedy, 'Enough of
Douglases--I am a Stewart. Read me of the Stewarts.' Then gave Master
Kennedy a look as when he laughs in his sleeve, and shook his head.
'This book concerneth battles,' said he, 'and not gear, plenishing,
and tocher. The Douglas won for King Robert his crown, the Stewart
only married his daughter--though that, if all tales be true, was the
braver deed!' Now that was no reverent speech to me that am a Stewart,
nor yet very gallant to my great-grandmother, was it, Earl Douglas?"

"It was no fine courtier's flattery, at any rate," said the Douglas,
his eyes wandering hither and thither across the cavalcade which they
were now meeting, in search of the graceful figure and darkly splendid
head of the girl he loved.

The Lady Sybilla was not there.

"They have secluded her," he muttered, in sharp jealous anger; "'tis
all her kinsman's fault. He hath the marks of a traitor and worse. But
they shall not spite nor flout the Douglas."

So with a countenance grave and unresponsive he saluted Livingston the
tutor, who came forth to meet h