abide by my brother to the end."

"No, my David," said the Earl, turning for a moment from the door
where he had been again listening, "you shall not stay! You are the
hope of our house. My mother would fret to death if aught happened to
you. This is not a matter which concerns you. Go, I bid you. On me it
lies, and if I must pay the reckoning, why at least only I drank the
wine."

"I will not;" cried the boy; "I tell you I will bide where my brother
bides and his fate shall be mine."

Then Sholto, well nigh frantic with apprehension and disappointment,
went to the window and leaned out, gripping the sill with his hands.

"They will not leave the castle," he whispered as loud as he dared;
"the Earl will not escape while the Lady Sybilla remains a prisoner
within."

"God in heaven!" cried a stern voice from below which made Sholto
start, "we shall be broken first and last upon that woman. Would to
God I had slain her with my hand! Tell the Earl that if he will not
come to those that wait for him underneath the tower, I, Malise
MacKim, will come and fetch him like a child in my arms, even as I did
from under the pine trees at Loch Roan."

And as he spoke the strain of the rope and its swaying over the
window-sill proclaimed that the mighty form of the master armourer was
even then on the way upwards towards the dungeon of his chief.