“I go, mother,” said Sholto, trying vainly to stem the torrent of denunciation which poured upon him; “I came only to see that all was well with you.”

“And what for should a’ be weel wi’ me?  What can be ill wi’ me, if it be not to gang on leevin’ when the noblest young men in the warld—­the lad that was suckled at my bosom, lies cauld in the clay.  Awa wi’ ye, Sholto MacKim, and come na back till ye hae rowed every traitor in the same bloody windin’ sheet!”

The foster mother of the Douglases sank on the ground in the dusk, leaning against the wall of her house.  She held her face in her hands and sobbed aloud, “O Willie, Willie Douglas, mair than ony o’ my ain I loed ye.  Bonny were ye as a bairn.  Bonny were ye as a laddie.  Bonny abune a’ as a noble young man and the desire o’ maidens’ e’en.  But nane o’ them a’ loed ye like poor auld Barbara, that wad hae gien her life to pleasure ye.  And noo she canna even steek thae black, black e’en, nor wind the corpse-claith aboot yon comely limbs—­sae straight and bonny as they were—­I hae straiked and kissed sae oft and oft.  O wae’s me—­wae’s me!  What will I do withoot my bonny laddies!”

It was with the sound of his mother’s lament still in his ears that Sholto rode sadly over the hill to Thrieve.  The way is short and easy, and it was not long before the captain of the guard looked down upon the lights of the castle gleaming through the gathering gloom.  But instead of being, as was its wont, lighted from highest battlement to flanking tower, only one or two lamps could be discerned shining out of that vast cliff of masonry.

But, on the other hand, lights were to be seen wandering this way and that over the long Isle of Thrieve, following the outlines of its winding shores, shining from the sterns of boats upon the pools of the Dee water, weaving intricately among the broomy braes on either side of the ford, and even streaming out across the water meadows of Balmaghie.

Sholto was so full of his own sorrow and the certain truth of the terrible news he must bring home to the Lady of Douglas and those two whom he loved, Maud Lindesay and her fair maid, that he paid little heed to these wandering lanterns and distant flaring torches.

He was pausing at the bridge head to wait the lowering of the draw-chains, when out of the covert above him there dashed a desperate horseman, who stayed neither for bridge nor ford, but rode straight at the eastern castle pool where it was deepest.  To the stirrup clung another figure strange and terrible, seen in the uncertain light from the gate-house and in the pale beams of the rising moon.

The drawbridge clattered down, and sending his spurs home into the flanks of his tired steed, in a moment more Sholto was hard on the track of the first headlong horseman.  Scarce a length separated them as they reached the outer guard of the castle.  Abreast they reined their horses in the quadrangle, and in a moment Sholto had recognised in the rider his brother Laurence, pale as death, and the figure that had clung to the stirrup as the horse took the water, was his father, Malise MacKim.