trepidation that the young man obeyed the summons.

"At any rate," he meditated with a slight return of complacency, as he
butted and shoved his way castle-wards, "he can scarcely mean to have
my head. For he was all day with my father at his elbow, and at the
worst I shall have another chance of seeing"--he did not call the
beloved by her Christian name even to himself, so he compromised by
adding somewhat lamely--"_her_."

Thus Sholto, putting speed in his heels and swinging along over the
trampled sward with the easy tireless trot of a sleuthhound, threaded
his way among the groups of villein prickers and swearing men-at-arms
who cumbered the main approaches of the castle.

He found the Earl walking swiftly up and down a little raised platform
which extended round three sides of Thrieve, outside the main
defences, but yet within the nether moat, the sluggish water of which
it over-looked on its inner side.

Earl William was manifestly discomposed and excited by the events of
the day, and especially by the fact that the Lady Sybilla seemed
utterly unconscious of ever having set eyes upon him before, appearing
entirely oblivious of having received him in a pavilion of
rose-coloured silk under the shelter of a grove of tall pines. The
young lord instinctively recoiled from any communication with his
master armourer, whose grave and impassive face revealed nothing which
might be passing in his mind. Then the Earl's thoughts turned upon
Sholto, who had been the first to observe his beauteous companion of
the Carlinwark woods.