they passed the drawbridge he turned him about in his saddle, as it
were, to see that his men rode all in good order. A little jet of
white fluttered quickly from the sparred wooden gallery which clung to
the grey walls of Thrieve, just outside the highest story. And the
young man's heart told him that this was the atonement of Mistress
Maud Lindesay.

Earl Douglas was in his gayest humour on this second day of the great
tourneying. He had got rid of his most troublesome guests. His uncle
James of Avondale, his red cousin of Angus, the grave ill-assorted
figure of the Abbot of Dulce Cor, had all vanished. Only the young and
chivalrous remained,--his cousins, William and James, Hugh and
Archibald, good lances all and excellent fellows to boot. It was also
a most noble chance that the French ambassador was confined by the
quinsy, for it was certainly pleasant to ride out alone with that
beauteous head glancing so near his shoulder, to watch at will the sun
crimsoning yet more the red lips, sparkling in the eyes that were
bright as sunshine slanting through green leaves on a water-break, and
to mark as he fell a pace behind how every hair of that luxuriant coif
rippled golden and separate, like a halo of Florentine work about the
head of a saint.

The Lady Sybilla de Thouars was merry also, but with what a different
mirth to that of Mistress Maud Lindesay--at least so thought Captain
Sholto MacKim, with a conscious glow of pride in his own Scottish
sweetheart.

True, Sholto was scarce a fair judge in that he loved one and did not
love the other. He owned to himself in a moment of unusual candour
that there might be something in that. But when the gay tones of the