'Na, na!' said Rab, descending; ''tis from the other gate; 'tis a knight
in blue damasked steel: he, methinks, that harboured in our castle some
weeks syne.'

'Hm!' said Halbert, considering; 'he looked like a trusty cheild: maybe
he'd guide my lord here to a wiser wit, and a good lance on the way to
Dunbar is not to be scorned.'

In fact, there would have been no time for one party to conceal
themselves from the other; for, hidden by the copsewood, and unheeded by
the watchers who were gazing in the opposite direction, Sir James Stewart
and his two attendants suddenly came round the foot of Jill's Knowe upon
the fugitives, who were profiting by the interval to loosen the girths of
their horses, and water them at the pool under the thicket, whilst
Halbert in vain tried to pacify and reason with the young master, who had
thrown himself on the grass in an agony of grief and despair. Sir James,
after the first momentary start, recognized the party in an instant, and
at once leapt from his horse, exclaiming--

'How now, my bonnie man--my kind host--what is it? what makes this
grief?'

'Do not speak to me, Sir,' muttered the unhappy boy. 'They have been
reft--reft from me, and I have done nothing for them. Walter of Albany
has them, and I am here.'

And he gave way to another paroxysm of grief, while Halbert explained to
Sir James Stewart that when Sir Patrick Drummond had gone to embark for
France, with the army led to the aid of Charles VI. by the Earl of
Buchan, his father and cousins, with a large escort, had accompanied him