ny o' my ain I
loed ye. Bonny were ye as a bairn. Bonny were ye as a laddie. Bonny
abune a' as a noble young man and the desire o' maidens' e'en. But
nane o' them a' loed ye like poor auld Barbara, that wad hae gien her
life to pleasure ye. And noo she canna even steek thae black, black
e'en, nor wind the corpse-claith aboot yon comely limbs--sae straight
and bonny as they were--I hae straiked and kissed sae oft and oft. O
wae's me--wae's me! What will I do withoot my bonny laddies!"

It was with the sound of his mother's lament still in his ears that
Sholto rode sadly over the hill to Thrieve. The way is short and easy,
and it was not long before the captain of the guard looked down upon
the lights of the castle gleaming through the gathering gloom. But
instead of being, as was its wont, lighted from highest battlement to
flanking tower, only one or two lamps could be discerned shining out
of that vast cliff of masonry.

But, on the other hand, lights were to be seen wandering this way and
that over the long Isle of Thrieve, following the outlines of its
winding shores, shining from the sterns of boats upon the pools of the
Dee water, weaving intricately among the broomy braes on either side
of the ford, and even streaming out across the water meadows of
Balmaghie.

Sholto was so full of his own sorrow and the certain truth of the
terrible news he must bring home to the Lady of Douglas and those two
whom he loved, Maud Lindesay and her fair maid, that he paid little
heed to these wandering lanterns and distant flaring torches.

He was pausing at the bridge head to wait the lowering of the
draw-chains, when out of the covert above him there dashed a desperate
horseman, who stayed neither for bridge nor ford, but rode straight at
the eastern castle pool where it was deepest. To the stirrup clung
another figure strange and terrible, seen in the uncertain light from
the gate-house and in the pale beams of the rising moon.

The drawbridge clattered down, and sending his spurs home into the
flanks of his tired steed, in a moment more Sholto was hard on the
track of the first headlong horseman. Scarce a length separated them
as they reached the outer guard of the castle. Abreast they reined
their horses in the quadrangle, and in a moment Sholto had recognised
in the rider his brother Laurence, pale as death, and the figure that
had clung to the stirrup as the horse took the water, was his father,
Malise MacKim.

Thus