Meanwhile he wore the steel cap of the home guard, the ringed neck mail, the close-fitting doublet of blue dotted over with red Douglas hearts and having the white cross of St. Andrew transversely upon it.  About his waist was a peaked brace of shining plate armour, damascened in gold by Malise himself, and filling out his almost girlish waist to manlier proportions.  From this depended a row of tags of soft leather.  Close chain-mail covered his legs, to which at the knees were added caps of triple plate.  A sheaf of arrows in a blue and gold quiver on his right side, a sword of metal on his left, and a short Scottish bow in his hand completed the attire of a fully equipped and efficient archer of the Earl’s guard.

The lads were soon at the fords of Lochar, where in the dry summers the stones show all the way across—­one in the midst being named the Black Douglas, noted as the place where, as tradition affirms, Archibald the Grim used to pause in crossing the ford to look at his new fortress of Thrieve, rising on its impregnable island above the rich water meadows.

Now neither Sholto nor Laurence wished to wet their leg array before the work and pageant of the day began.  This was the desire of Laurence, because of the maids who would assemble on the Boreland Braes, and of Sholto inasmuch as he hoped to win the prize for the best accoutrement and the most point-device attiring among all the archers of the Earl’s guard.  The young men had asked crusty Simon Conchie, the boatman at the Ferry Croft, to set them over, offering him a groat for his pains.  But he was far too busy to pay any attention to mere silver coin on such an occasion, only pausing long enough to cry to them that they must e’en cross at the fords, as many of their betters would do that day.

There was nothing for it, therefore, but either to strip to the waist or to wait the chances of the traffic.  Both Sholto and Laurence were exceedingly loath to take the former course.  They had not, however, long to hesitate, for a train of sumpter mules, belonging to the Lord Herries of Terregles, whose father had been with Archibald the Tineman in France, came up laden with the choicest products of the border country which he designed to offer as part of the “Service-Kane” to his overlord, the Earl of Douglas.

Now mules are all of them snorting, ill-conditioned brutes, and are ever ready to run away upon the least excuse, or even without any.  So as soon as those of Lord Herries’ train caught the glint of Sholto’s blue baldric and shining steel girdle-brace appearing suddenly from behind a knoll, they incontinently bolted every way with noses to the ground, scattering packs and brandishing heels like young colts turned out to grass.  It chanced that one of the largest mules made directly towards the fords of Lochar, and the youths, catching the flying bridle at either side, applied a sort of brake which sufficiently slowed the beast’s movements to enable such agile skipjacks as Sholto and Laurence to mount.  But as they were concerned more with their leaping from the ground than with what was already upon the animal’s back, their heads met with a crash in the midst, in which collision the superior weight of the younger had very naturally the better of the encounter.