ghtly stable on
the Castle Isle.

CHAPTER III

TWO RIDING TOGETHER

"Joyous," she cried, as they went, "Oh, most joyous would it be to see
the noble castle and to have all the famous two thousand knights to
make love to me at once! To capture two thousand hearts at one sweep
of the net! What would Margaret of France herself say to that?"

"Is there no single heart sufficient to satisfy you, fair maid?" said
the young man, in a low voice; "none loyal enough nor large enough for
you that you desire so many?"

"And what would I do with one if it were in my hands," she said
wistfully; "that is, if it were a worthy heart and one worth the
taking. Ever since I was a child I have always broken my toys when I
tired of them."

The voices of the singing children on the green came more faintly to
their ears, but the words were still clear to be understood.

_"Off to prison you must go, you must go, you must go,
Off to prison you must go,
My fair lady!"_

"You hear? It is my fate!" she said.

"Nay," answered the Earl, passionately, still looking in her eyes.
"Mine, mine--not yours! Gladly I would go to prison or to death for
the love of one so fair!"

"My lord, my lord," she laughed, with a tolerant protest in her voice,
"you keep up the credit of your house right nobly. How goes the
distich? My mother taught it me upon the bridge of Avignon, where also
as here in Scotland the children dance and sing."

"First in the love of Woman,
First in the field of fight,
First in the death that men must die,
Such is the Douglas' right!"

"Here and now," he said, still looking at her, "'tis only the first I
crave."

"Earl William, positively you must come to Court!" she shrilled into
sudden tinkling laughter; "there be ladies there more worthy of your
ardour than a poor errant maiden such as I."

"A Court," cried Earl William, scornfully, "to the Seneschal's court!
Nay, truly. Could a Stewart ever keep his faith or pay his debts?
Never, since the first of them licked his way into a lady's favour."

"Oh," she answered lightly, "I meant not the Court of Stirling nor yet
the Chancellor's Castle of Edinburgh. I meant the only great
Court--the Court of France, the Court of Charles the Seventh, the
Court which already owns the sway of its rarest ornament, your own
Scottish Princess Margaret."

"Thither I cannot go unless the King of Fra