Sholto, who in virtue of his courage and good marksmanship had been placed over the archer company which waited on the right of the ford, fell in immediately behind the cortege of the Earl.  He was first man of all to have his equipment examined, and his weapons obtained, as they deserved, the commendation of his liege lord, and the grim unwilling approval of Malise, the master armourer, whose unerring eye could not detect so much as a speck on the shirt of mail, or a grain of rust on the waist brace of shining steel.

Then the Earl rode down the lines, and Sholto, remembering the encounter amidst the dust of the roadway, breathed more freely when he saw his father’s back.

And surely that day the heart of the Douglas must have beat proud and high within him, for there they stood, company behind ordered company, the men on whom he could count to the death.  And truly the lad of eighteen, who in Scotland was greater than the King, looked upon their steadfast thousands with a swelling heart.

The Abbot had made particular inquiries where Laurence was stationed, which was in the archer company of the Laird of Kelton.  Most of the monkish band had been made too happy by the deception practised on their Abbot concerning “Mary Quean,” and were too desirous to have such a rogue to play his pranks in the dull abbey, to tell any tales on Laurence MacKim.  But one, Berguet, a Belgian priest who had begged his way to Scotland, and whose nature was that of the spy and sycophant, approached and volunteered the information to the Abbot that this lad to whom he was desirous of showing favour, was a ribald and hypocritical youth.

“Eh, what?” said the Abbot, “a bodle for thy ill-set tongue, false loon, dost think I did not hear him sing his fair and seemly orisons?  I tell thee, rude out-land jabberer, that I am a Douglas, and have ears better than those of any Frenchman that ever breathed.  For this thou shalt kneel six nights on the cold stone of the holy chapel house, and say of paternosters ten thousand and of misereres thou shall sing three hundred.  And this shall chance to teach thee to be scanter with thy foul breath when thou speakest to the Abbot of the Foundation of Devorgill concerning better men than thyself.”

The Belgian priest gasped and fell back, and none other was found to say aught against Master Laurence, which, considering the ten thousand paternosters and the three hundred misereres, was not unnatural.

As the Earl passed along the line he was annoyed by the iterated requests of his uncle to be informed when they should come to the company of the Laird of Kelton.  And the good Abbot, being like all deaf men apt to speak a little loud, did not improve matters by constantly making remarks behind his hand, upon the appearance or character (as known to him) of the various dependents of the Douglas House who had come out to show their loyalty and exhibit their preparedness for battle.