"Unbar the door, and hide not."

It must be Elliot's voice, speaking through some tube contrived in the
ingle of the dwelling-room below or otherwise. Glad at heart to think
that she took thought of me, I unbarred the door, and threw myself into a
chair before the fire, trying to look like one unconcerned. The bolts
were now drawn below; I heard voices, rather Scots than French, to my
sense. Then the step of one man climbed up the stair, heavily, and with
the tap of a staff keeping tune to it. It was my master. His face was
pale, and falling into a chair, he wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Unhappy man that I am!" he said, "I have lost my apprentice."

I gulped something down in my throat ere I could say, "Then it is death?"

"Nay," he said, and smiled. "But gliff for gliff, {16} you put a fear on
me this day, and now we are even."

"Yet I scarce need a cup of wine for my recovery, master," I said,
filling him a beaker from the flagon on the table, which he drained
gladly, being sore wearied, so steep was the way to the castle, and hard
for a lame man. My heart was as light as a leaf on a tree, and the
bitterness of shameful death seemed gone by.

"I have lost my prentice another way," he said, setting down the cup on
the table. "I had much a do to see Kennedy, for he was at the dice with
other lords. At length, deeming there was no time to waste, I sent in
the bonny Book of Hours, praying him to hear me for a moment on a weighty
matter. That brought him to my side; he leaped at the book like a trout
at a fly, and took me to his own chamber. There I told him your story.
When it came to the wench in the King's laundry, and Robin Lindsay, and