seman showed disks of defilement all
over, like a tree trunk covered with toadstool growths.

"Shoot down the intolerable young rascal! Shall he thus beard my Lord
Maxwell?" cried a voice from the troop which witnessed the chase. And
more than one bow was bent, and several hand-fusils levelled from the
company which followed behind.

But the injured knight threw up his visor.

"Hold, there!" he cried, "the boy is right. It was I who insulted him,
and he did right to be revenged, though the rogue's aim is more to be
admired than his choice of weapons. Come hither, lad. Tell me who thou
art, and what is thy father's quality?"

"I am Laurence MacKim, an archer of my lord's guard, and the younger
son of Malise MacKim, master armourer to the Douglas."

Laurence, being still angry, rang out his titles as if they had been
inscribed in the book of the Lion-King-at-Arms.

"Saints save us," cried the knight in swart armour, "all that!"

Then, seeing the boy ready to answer back still more fiercely, he
continued with a courteous wave of the hand.

"I humbly ask your pardon, Master Laurence. I am glad the son of
Brawny Kim hath no small part of his father's spirit. Will you take
service and be my esquire, as becomes well a lad of parts who desires
to win his way to a knighthood?"

The heart of Laurence MacKim beat quickly--a horse to ride--an
esquire--perhaps if he had luck and much fighting, a knighthood.
Nevertheless, he answered with a bold straight look out of his black
eyes.

"I am an archer of my lord Douglas' outer guard. I can have no
promotion save from him or those of his house--not even from the King
himself."

"Well said!" cried the knight; "small wonder that the Douglas is the
greatest man in Scotland. I will speak to the Earl William this day
concerning you."

Lord Maxwell rode on at the head of his company with a courteous
salutation, which not a few behind him who had heard the colloquy
imitated. Laurence stood there with his heart working like yeast
within him, and his colour coming and going to think what he had been
offered and what he had refused.

"God's truth," he said to himself, "I might have been a great man if I
had chosen, while Sholto, that old sober sides, was left lagging
behind."

Then he looked about for his bow and went swaggering along as if he
were already Sir Laurence and the leader of an army.

But Nemesis was upon him, and that in the fashion which his pride
would feel the