turnpike stair. But with a slight wave of his hand the Earl passed on
to his own apartment.

Here he found his faithful body-servant, René le Blesois, stretched
across the threshold. The staunch Frenchman rose mechanically at the
noise of his master's footsteps, and, though still soundly asleep,
stood with the latch of the door in his hand, and the other held
stiffly to his brow in salutation.

Left to his own devices, Lord William Douglas would doubtless have
cast himself, wet as he was, upon his bed had not Le Blesois,
observing his lord's plight even in his own sleep-dulled condition,
entered the chamber after his master and, without question or speech,
silently begun to relieve him of his wet hunting dress. A loose
chamber gown of rich red cloth, lined with silk and furred with
"cristy" grey, hung over the back of an oaken chair, and into this the
young Earl flung himself in black and sullen anger.

Le Blesois, still without a word spoken, left the room with the wet
clothes over his arm. As he did so a small object rolled from some
fold or crevice of the doublet, where it had been safely lodged till
displaced by the loosening of the belt, or the removing of the
banderole of his master's hunting horn.

Le Blesois turned at the tinkling sound, and would have stopped to
lift it up after the manner of a careful servitor. But the eye of his
lord was upon the fallen object, and with an abrupt wave of his hand
towards the door, and the single word "Go!" the Earl dismissed his
body-servant from the room.