The choleric younger brother leaped forward with an oath on his lips, but his calmer senior kept him back with his hand.

“Silence, James!” he said; “I will answer our father.  Sir, we have heard what you say, but our minds are not changed.  What cause to associate yourself with traitors and mansworn you may have, we do not know and we do not care.”

At his son’s first words James the Gross rose with a sudden surprising access of dignity remarkable in one of his figure.

“I bid you remember,” he said, speaking southland English, as he was wont to do in moments of excitement, “I bid you remember, sirrah, that I am the Earl of Douglas and Avondale, Justicer of Scotland—­and your father.”

William Douglas bowed, respectful but unmoved.

“My lord,” he said, “I forget nothing.  I do not judge you.  You are in authority over our house.  You shall do what you will with these forces without there, so be you can convince them of your right.  Black murder, whether you knew and approved it or no, has made you Earl of Douglas.  But, sir, if you take part with my cousins’ murderers now, or screen them from our just vengeance and the vengeance of God, I tell you that from this day you are a man without children.  For in this matter I speak not only for myself, but for all your sons!” He turned to his brother.

“James,” he said, “call in the others.”  James went to the tent door and called aloud.

“Archibald, Hugh, and John, come hither quickly.”

A moment after three young men of noble build, little more than lads indeed, but with the dark Douglas allure stamped plainly upon their countenances, entered, bowed to their father, and stood silent with their hands crossed upon the hilts of their swords.

William Douglas went on with the same determinate and relentless calm.

“My lord,” he said, very respectfully, “here stand your five sons, all soldiers and Douglases, waiting to hear your will.  Murder has been done upon the chief of our house by two men of cowardly heart and mean consideration, Crichton and Livingston, instigated by the false ambassador of the King of France.  We have come hither to punish these slayers of our kin, and we desire to know what you, our father, think concerning the matter.”

James the Gross was still standing, steadying himself with his hand on the arm of the oaken chair in which he had been sitting.  He spoke with some difficulty, which might proceed either from emotion or from the plethoric habit of the man.

“Have I for this brought children into the world,” he said, “that they should lift up their hands against the father that begat them?  Ye know that I have ever warned you against the pride and arrogance of your cousins of Galloway.”

“You mean, of the late Earl of Douglas and the boy his brother,” answered William; “the pride of eighteen and fourteen is surely vastly dangerous.”