The heart of Laurence MacKim beat quickly—­a horse to ride—­an esquire—­perhaps if he had luck and much fighting, a knighthood.  Nevertheless, he answered with a bold straight look out of his black eyes.

“I am an archer of my lord Douglas’ outer guard.  I can have no promotion save from him or those of his house—­not even from the King himself.”

“Well said!” cried the knight; “small wonder that the Douglas is the greatest man in Scotland.  I will speak to the Earl William this day concerning you.”

Lord Maxwell rode on at the head of his company with a courteous salutation, which not a few behind him who had heard the colloquy imitated.  Laurence stood there with his heart working like yeast within him, and his colour coming and going to think what he had been offered and what he had refused.

“God’s truth,” he said to himself, “I might have been a great man if I had chosen, while Sholto, that old sober sides, was left lagging behind.”

Then he looked about for his bow and went swaggering along as if he were already Sir Laurence and the leader of an army.

But Nemesis was upon him, and that in the fashion which his pride would feel the most.

“Take that, beast of a Laurence!” cried a voice behind him.

And the lad received a jolt from behind which loosened his teeth in their sockets and discomposed the dignified stride with which in imagination he was commanding the armies of the Douglas.

CHAPTER IX

LAURENCE SINGS A HYMN

Laurence turned and beheld his brother.  In another instant the two young men had clinched and were rolling on the ground, wrestling and striking according to their ability.  Sholto might easily have had the best of the fray, but for the temper aroused by Laurence’s recent degradation, for the elder brother was taller by an inch, and of a frame of body more lithe and supple.  Moreover, the accuracy of Sholto MacKim’s shape and the severe training of the smithy had not left a superfluous ounce of flesh on him anywhere.

In a minute the brothers had become the centre of a riotous, laughing throng of varlets—­archers seeking their corps, and young squires sent by their lords to find out the exact positions allotted to each contingent by the provost of the camp.  For as the wappenshaw was to be of three days’ duration in all its nobler parts, a wilderness of tents had already begun to arise under the scattered white thorns of the great Boreland Croft which stretched up from the river.

These laughed and jested after their kind, encouraging the youths to fight it out, and naming Laurence the brock or badger from his stoutness, and the slim Sholto the whitterick or, as one might say, weasel.

“At him, Whitterick—­grip him!  Grip him!  Now you have him at the pinch!  Well pulled, Brock!  ’Tis a certainty for Brock—­good Brock!  Well done—­well done!  Ah, would you?  Hands off that dagger!  Let fisticuffs settle it!  The Whitterick hath it—­the Whitterick!”