“I pray that you permit my young knight, Sir Sholto MacKim, to accompany me,” said the Earl to the officer who conducted them to their prison-house.

“I have no orders concerning him,” said the man, gruffly, but nevertheless permitted Sholto to enter after the Earl and his brother.

The chamber was bare save for a prie-dieu in the angle of the wall, at which the Douglas looked with a strange smile upon his face.

“Right a propos,” said he; “they have need of religion in this house of traitors.”

David Douglas went to the window-seat of low stone, and bent his head into his hands.  He was but a boy and life was sweet to him, for he had just begun to taste the apple and to dream of the forbidden fruit.  He held his head down and was silent a space.  Then suddenly he sobbed aloud with a quick, gasping noise, startling enough in that still place.

“For God’s dear sake, David laddie,” said his brother, going over to him, placing his hand upon his shoulder, “be silent.  They will think that we are afraid.”

The boy stilled himself instantly at the word, and looked up at his brother with a pale sort of smile.

“No, William, I am not afraid, and if indeed we must die I will not disgrace you.  Be never feared of that.  Yet I thought on our mother’s loneliness.  She will miss me sore, for she fleeched and pled with me not to come, yet I would not listen to her.”

Sholto stood by the door, erect as if on duty at Thrieve.

“Come and sit with us,” said the Earl William kindly to him, “we are no more master and servant, earl and esquire.  We are but three youths that are to die together, and the axe’s edge levels all.  You, Sholto, are in some good chance to live the longest of the three by some half score of minutes.  I am glad I made you a knight on the field of honour, Sir Sholto, for then they cannot hang you to a bough, like a varlet caught stealing the King’s venison.”

Sholto slowly came over to the window-seat and stood there respectfully as before, with his arms straight at his side, feeling more than anything else the lack of his sword-hilt to set his right hand upon.

“Nay, but do as I bid you,” said the Earl, looking up at him; “sit down, Sholto.”

And Sholto sat on the window-seat and looked forth upon the lights leaping out one after another down among the crowded gables of the town as this and that burgher lit lamp or lantern at the nearing of the hour of supper.

Far away over the shore-lands the narrow strip of the Forth showed amethystine and mysterious, and farther out still the coast of Fife lay in a sort of opaline haze.

“I wonder,” said William Douglas, after a long pause, “what they have done with our good lads.  Had they been taken or perished we had surely heard more noise, I warrant.  Two score lads of Galloway would not give up their arms without a tulzie for it.”