The Earl first made a gesture commanding silence, and then, hearing nothing more, he came slowly over to the window.  “It is the Lady Sybilla,” he said, in a voice which revealed his deep emotion.  “She said, in the French language, ’You shall not kill him.  You shall not!  He trusted me and he shall not die.’”

Meanwhile Sholto, knowing that there was no time to lose, had been drawing in the cord, which presently thickened into a rope stout enough to support the weight of a light and active youth such as any of the three young men imprisoned in David’s Tower.

But the sound of the woman’s tears had thrown the Earl into an excitement so extreme that he hammered on the great bolt-studded door with his bare clenched hands, and cried aloud to the Chancellor and Livingston, commanding them to open to him.  His first calmness seemed completely broken up.

Meanwhile Sholto, his whole soul bent on the cord which gave the unseen Douglases a chance of saving the lives of their masters, had drawn thirty yards of stout rope into the room.  He fixed it by a double knot, first to a ring which was let into the wall, and afterwards to the massive handle of the door itself.

“Now, my lord,” he whispered, as he finished, “be pleased to go first.  Our lads are beneath, and in the shaking of a cow’s tail we shall be safe in the midst of them.”

The Earl held up his hand with the quick imperative motion he used to command silence.  The sound of the woman’s voice came again from above, now quick and high, like one who makes an agonised petition, and now in tones lower that seemed broken with sobs and lamentations.

At first William Douglas did not appear to comprehend the meaning of Sholto’s words, being so bent on his listening.  But when the young captain of the guard again reminded him that the time of their chances for relief was quickly passing, and that the soldiers of the Chancellor might come at any moment to lead them to their doom, the Earl broke out upon him in sudden anger.

“For what crawling thing do you take me, Sholto MacKim?” he cried; “I will not leave this place till I know what they have done with her.  She trusted me, and shall I prove a recreant?  I would have you know that I am William, Earl of Douglas, and fear not the face of any Crichton that ever breathed.  Ho—­there—­without!” and again he shook the door with ineffectual anger.

His only answer was the sound of that beseeching woman’s voice, and the measured tread of the sentry, whose partisan they could see flashing in the lamplight through the narrow barred wicket, as he turned in front of their door.

And it was now all in vain that Sholto pled with his master.  To every argument Lord Douglas replied, “I cannot go—­it consorts not with mine honour to leave this castle so long as the Lady Sybilla is in their hands.”

Sholto told him how they could now escape, and in a week would raise the whole of the south, returning to the siege of the castle and the destruction of the traitors Crichton and Livingston.  But even to this the Earl had his answer.