separate you from all who love you? And I shall be blamed for this in
Galloway. At least, let me accompany you with half a dozen men."

"Nay," said the Earl, "such suspicion were a poor return for the
Chancellor's putting himself in our hands all the days we spent with
him at his Castle of Crichton. To your lodgings, Sholto, and give God
thanks if there be therein a pretty maid or a dame complaisant,
according to the wont of young squires and men-at-arms."

In this fashion rode the Earl of Douglas to take his first dinner in
the Castle of Edinburgh. And Sholto MacKim went behind him, no man
saying him nay. For his master had eyes only for one face, and that he
could not see.

"But I shall find her yet," he said over and over in his heart. It was
but a boyish heart, and simple, too; but all so brave and high that
the gallantest and greatest gentleman in the world had not one like to
it for loyalty and courage.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE BLACK BULL'S HEAD


The banqueting-hall of Edinburgh Castle, but lately out of artificers'
hands, was a noble oblong chamber reaching from side to side of the
south-looking keep, begun by James I. It was decorated in the French