As he lifted the girl down his heart thundered tumultuously in his breast, for he had never so touched her before.  Her lashes rested modestly on her cheek—­long, black, and upcurled a little at the ends.  As her foot touched the ground, she raised them a moment, and looked at him with one swift flash of violet eyes made darker by the seclusion from which she had released them.  Then in another moment she had dropped them again, detaching them from his with a mighty affectation of confusion.

“Please, Sholto, I am sorry.  I did not mean it.”  She spoke like a child that is sorry for a fault and is fearful of being chidden.

And even though knowing full well by bitter experience all her naughtiness and hypocrisy, Sholto, gulping his heart well down into his throat, could not do otherwise than forgive a thing so pretty and so full of the innocent artifices which make mown hay of the hearts of men.

With a touch of his lips upon the hand of Margaret the Maid in token of fealty, Sholto MacKim turned on his heel and went away towards the fords of Thrieve, muttering to himself, “No, she does not mean it, I do believe.  But I have ever heard that of all women she who never means it is the most dangerous.”

And this is a dict which no wise man can gainsay.

CHAPTER XIII

A DAUNTING SUMMONS

Not far before them had ridden the Earl and the Lady Sybilla.  Behind these two came the Marshal de Retz and the fat Lord of Avondale.  They were telling each other tales of the wars of La Pucelle, the latter laughing and shaking shoulders, but at the end of every side-splitting legend the Frenchman would glance over his shoulder at Maud Lindesay and the little maiden Margaret.

As Sholto passed them on his return he stood aside, poised at the salute, looking meanwhile with awe on the great and notable French soldier.  Yet at the first glimpse of his unvisored face there fell upon the young man a dislike so fierce and instinctive that he grasped his bow and fumbled in his quiver for an arrow, in order to send it through the unlaced joints of the Marshal’s gorget, which for ease’s sake his squire had undone when they left the field.

Sholto MacKim was at the fords waiting the chance of crossing and the pleasure of the surly keeper of the bridge, Elson A’Cormack, who sat in his wheelhouse, grunting curses on all who passed that way.

“Foul feet, slow bellies, fushionless and slack ye are to run my lord’s errands!  But quick enow to return home upon your trampling clattering ruck of horses, and every rascal of you expecting to ride over my bridge of good pine planking instead of washing the dirt from your hoofs in honest Dee water.”

The long files of horsemen threaded their way across the green plain of the isle towards the open space in front of Thrieve Castle, the points of their spears shining high in the air, and the shafts so thick underneath that, seen from a distance, they made a network of slender lines reticulated against the brightness of the sun.