The Black Douglas. S. R. Crockett
teeth rattle as he was shaken sideways till his joints waggled like those of a puppet at Keltonhill Fair. Then it was his turn to be doused in the water. Next their heads were soundly knocked together, and finally, like a pair of arrows sent right and left, Laurence sped forth at the window in the gable end and found himself in the midst of a gooseberry bush, whilst Sholto, flying out of the door, fell sprawling on all fours almost under the feet of a horse on which a young man sat, smilingly watching the scene.
Brawny Kim scattered the embers of the fire on the forge-hearth, and threw the breastplate and girdle-brace at which the boys had been working into a corner of the smithy. Then he turned to lock the door with the massive key, which stood so far out from the upper leaf that to it the horses waiting their turns to be shod were ordinarily tethered.
As he did so he caught sight of the young man sitting silent on the black charger. Instantly a change passed over his face. With one motion of his hand he swept the broad blue bonnet from his brow, and bowed the grizzled head which had worn it low upon his breast. Thus for the breathing of a breath the master armourer stood, and then, replacing his bonnet, he looked up again at the young knight on horseback.
"My lord," he said, after a long pause, in which he waited for the youth to speak, "this is not well—you ride unattended and unarmed."
"Ah, Malise," laughed the young Earl, "a Douglas has few privileges if he may not sometimes on a summer eve lay aside his heavy prisonment of armour and don such a suit as this! What think you, eh? Is it not a valiant apparel, as might almost beseem one who rode a-courting?"
The mighty master-smith looked at the young man with eyes in which reverence, rebuke, and admiration strove together.
"But," he said, wagging his head with a grave humorousness, "your lordship needs not to ride a-courting. You are to be married to a great dame who will bring you wealth, alliance, and the dower of provinces."
The young man shrugged his shoulders, and swung lightly off his charger, which turned to look at him as he stood and patted its neck.
"Know you not, Malise," he said, "that the Earl of Douglas must needs marry provinces and the Lord of Galloway wed riches? But what is there in that to prevent Will Douglas going courting at eighteen years of his age as a young man ought. But have no fear, I come not hither seeking the favour of any, save of that lily flower of yours, the only true May-blossom that blooms on the Three Thorns of Carlinwark. I would look upon the angel smile on the face of your little daughter Magdalen. An she be here, I would toss her arm-high for a kiss of her mouth, which I would rather touch than that of lady or leman. For I do ever profess myself her vassal and slave. Where have you hidden her, Malise? Declare it or perish!"
The smith lifted up his voice till it struck on the walls of his cottage and echoed like thunder along the shores of the lake.
"Dame Barbara," he cried, and again, getting no answer, "ho, Dame Barbara, I say!"
Then at the second hallo, a shrill and somewhat peevish voice proceeded from within the house opposite.
"Aye, coming, can you not hear, great nolt! 'Deed and 'deed 'tis a pretty pass when a woman with the cares of an household must come running light-toe and clatter-heel to every call of such a lazy lout. Husband, indeed—not house-band but house-bond, I wot—house-torment, house-thorn, house-cross—"
A sonsy, well-favoured, middle-aged head, strangely at variance with the words which came from it, peeped out, and instantly the scolding brattle was stilled. Back went the head into the dark of the house as if shot from a bombard.
Malise MacKim indulged in a low hoarse chuckle as he caught the words: "Eh, 'tis my Lord William! Save us, and me wanting my Ryssil gown that cost me ten silver shillings the ell, and no even so muckle as my white peaked cap upon my head."
Her husband glanced at the young Earl to see if he appreciated the savour of the jest. Then he looked away, turning the enjoyment over and over under his own tongue, and muttering: "Ah, well, 'tis not his fault. No man hath a sense of humour before he is forty years of his age—and, for that matter, 'tis all the riper at fifty."
The young man's eyes were looking this way and that, up and down the smooth pathway which skirted like a green selvage the shores of the loch.
"Malise," he said, as if he had already forgotten his late eager quest for the little Magdalen, "Darnaway here has a shoe loose, and to-morrow I ride to levy, and may also joust a bout in the tilt-yard of the afternoon. I would not ask you to work in Whitsuntide, but that there cometh my Lord Fleming and Alan Lauder of the Bass, bringing with them an embassy from France—and I hear there may be fair ladies in their company."
"Ah!" quoth Malise, grimly, "so I have heard it said concerning the embassies of Charles, King of France!"
But the young man only smiled, and dusted off one or two flecks of foam which had blown backwards from his horse's bit upon the rich crimson doublet of finest velvet, which, cinctured closely at the waist, fell half-way to his knees in heavy double pleats sewn with gold. A hunting horn of black and gold was suspended about his neck by a bandolier of dark leather, subtiley embroidered with bosses of gold. Laced boots of soft black hide, drawn together on the outside from ankle to mid-calf with a golden cord, met the scarlet "chausses" which covered his thighs and outlined the figure of him who was the noblest youth and the most gallant in all the realm of Scotland.
Earl William wore no sword. Only a little gold-handled poignard with a lady's finger ring set upon the point of the hilt was at his side, and he stood resting easily his hand upon it as he talked, drawing it an inch from its sheath and snicking it back again nonchalantly, with a sound like the clicking of a well-oiled lock.
"Clink the strokes strongly and featly, Malise, for to-morrow, when the Black Douglas rides upon Black Darnaway under the eyes of—well—of the ladies whom the ambassadors are bringing to greet me, there must be no stumbling and no mistakes. Or on the head of Malise MacKim the matter shall be, and let that wight remember that the Douglas does not keep a dule tree up there by the Gallows Slock for nothing."
The mighty smith was by this time examining the hoofs of the Earl's charger one by one with such instinctive delicacy of touch that Darnaway felt the kindly intent, and, bending his neck about, blew and snuffled into the armourer's tangled mat of crisp grey hair.
"Up there!" exclaimed MacKim, as the warm breath tickled his neck, and at the burst of sound the steed shifted and clattered upon the hard-beaten floor of the smithy, tossing his head till the bridle chains rang again.
"Eh, my Lord William," an altered voice came from the door-step, where Dame Barbara MacKim, now clothed and in her right mind, stood louting low before the young Earl, "but this is a blythe and calamitatious day for this poor bit bigging o' the Carlinwark—to think that your honour should visit his servants! Will you no come ben and sit doon in the house-place? 'Tis far from fitting for your feet to pass thereupon. But gin ye will so highly favour—"
"Nay, I thank you, good Dame Barbara," said the Earl, very courteously taking off the close-fitting black cap with the red feather in it which was upon his head. "I must bide but a moment for your husband to set right certain nails in the hoofs of Darnaway here, to ready me for the morrow. Do you come to see the sport? So buxom a dame as the mistress of Carlinwark should not be absent to encourage the lads to do their best at the sword-play and the rivalry of the butts."
And as the dame came forth courtesying and bowing her delighted thanks, Earl William, setting a forefinger under her triple chin, stooped and kissed her in his gayest and most debonair manner.
"Eh, only to think on't," cried the dame, clapping her hands together as she did at mass, "that I, Barbara MacKim, that am marriet to a donnert auld carle like Malise there, should hae the privileege o' a salute frae the bonny mou' o' Yerl William—(Thank ye kindly, my lord!)—and be inveeted to the weepen-shawing to sit amang the leddies and view the sport. Malise, my man, caa' ye no that an honour, a privileege? Is that no owing to me being the sister—on my faither's side—o' Ninian Halliburton, merchant and indweller in Dumfries?"
"Nay, nay, good dame," laughed the Earl, "'tis all for the