She bent and laid her lips on the young man’s brow.  They were hot as iron uncooled from the smithy anvil.

“Come with me,” she added, and with a vehemence strangely at odds with her calm of the night before, she took Sholto by the hand and drew him after her into the room that had been Earl William’s.

From the bundle of keys at her side she took a small one of French design.  With this she unlocked a tall cabinet which stood in a corner.  She threw the folding doors open, and there in the recess hung a wonderful suit of armour, of the sort called at that time “secret.”

“This,” said the Lady of Douglas, “I had designed for my son.  Ten years was it in the making.  His father trysted it from a cunning artificer in Italy.  All these years has it been perfecting for him.  It comes too late.  His eyes shall never see it, nor his body wear it.  But I give it to you.  No Avondale shall ever do it upon him.  It will fit you, for you and he were of a bigness.  No sword can cut through these links, were it steel of Damascus forged for a Sultan.  No spear-thrust can pierce it, though I leave you to avenge the bruise.  Yet it will lie soft as silk, concealed and unsuspected under the rags of a beggar or the robes of a king.  The cap will turn the edge of an axe, even when swung by a giant’s hand, yet it will fit into the lining of a Spanish hat or velvet bonnet.  This your present errand may prove more dangerous than you imagine.  Go and put it on.”

Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of his liege lady.  Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead.  In Sholto’s hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara’s loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear next their bodies.

With it there went an under-suit of finest and softest leather, that the skin should not be chafed by the cunning links as they worked smoothly over one another at each movement of the body within.

Sholto buckled on his lady’s gift with a swelling heart.  It was his dead master’s armour.  And as piece by piece fitted him as a glove fits the hand, the spirit of William Douglas seemed to enter more and more into the lad.

Then Sholto covered this most valuable gift with his own clothing which he had brought from the house of Carlinwark, and presently emerged, a well-looking but still slim squire of decent family.

Then the Countess belted on him the sword of price which went therewith, a blade of matchless Toledan steel, but covered with a plain scabbard of black pigskin.

“Draw and thrust,” commanded the lady, pointing at the rough stone of the wall at the end of the passage.

Sholto looked ruefully at the glittering blade which he held in his hand, flashing blue from point to double guard.