green was strongly fenced in, with a rising tier of seats for the
ladies along one side, and a throne in the midst for the Douglas
himself, as high and as nobly upholstered as if the King of Scots had
been presiding in person.

At ten by the great sun-dial of Thrieve, the Earl, armed in complete
armour of rare work, damascened with gold, and bearing in his hand the
truncheon of commander, rode first through the fords of Lochar, and
immediately after him came his brother David, a tall handsome boy of
fourteen, whose olive skin and highbred beauty attested his Douglas
birth.

Next rode the Earl of Angus, a red, foxy-featured man, with mean and
shifty eyes. He sat his horse awkwardly, perpetually hunching his
shoulders forward as if he feared to fall over his beast's head. And
saving among his own company, no man did him any honour, which caused
him to grin with wicked sidelong smiles of hate and envy.

Then amid the shouting of the people there appeared, on a milk-white
palfrey, Margaret, the Earl's only sister, already famous over all
Scotland as "The Fair Maid of Galloway." With her rode one who, in the
esteem of most who saw the pair that day, was a yet rarer flower, even
Maud Lindesay, who had come out of the bleak North to keep the lonely
little maid company. For Margaret of Douglas was yet no more than a
child, but Maud Lindesay was nineteen years of age and in the first
perfect bloom of her beauty.

Behind these two came the whole array of the knights and barons who
owned allegiance to the Douglas,--Herons and Maxwells, Ardwell
Macullochs, Gordons from the Glen of Kells, with Agnews and MacDowalls