young Douglases arrived with their sparse train of thirty riders. Sir
William Crichton had ridden out to meet them across the innumerable
little valleys which lie around Temple and Borthwick to the brow of
that great heathy tableland which runs back from the Moorfoots clear
to the Solway.

With him were only the Marshal de Retz and his niece, the Lady
Sybilla.

Not a single squire or man-at-arms accompanied these three, for, as
the Chancellor well judged, there was no way more likely effectually
to lull the suspicions of a gallant man like the Douglas than to
forestall him in generous confidence.

The three sat their horses and looked to the south for their guests at
that delightsome hour of the summer gloaming when the last bees are
reluctantly disengaging themselves from the dewy heather bells and the
circling beetles begin their booming curfew.

"There they come!" cried de Retz, suddenly, pointing to a few specks
of light which danced and dimpled between them and the low horizon of
the south, against which, like a spacious armada, leaned a drift of
primrose sunset clouds.

"There they come--I see them also!" said the Lady Sybilla, and
suddenly sighed heavily and without cause.

"Where, and how many?" cried the Chancellor, in a shrill pipe usually
associated with the physically deformed, but which from him meant no
more than anxious discomposure.