Lord William raised his eyes to where in the bonnet of the youth his own golden badge of archery glistened.

“And I also won the swording prize at the last wappenshaw on the moot hill of Urr,” said Sholto, taking courage, and being resolved that if his fortune stood not now on tiptoe, it should not be on account of any superfluity of modesty on his own part.

“Ah,” said the Earl, “I remember.  It was two golden hearts joined together with an arrow and a star in the midst—­a fitting Douglas emblem, by the bones of Saint Bride!  Where hast thou left that badge that thou dost not wear it along with the other?”

Sholto blushed and muttered that he had forgotten it at home.  He was all of a breaking perspiration lest he should have to tell the Earl that he had given it to Maud Lindesay, as indeed he meant to do presently, along with the golden buckle of archery,—­that is if the dainty, mischievous-hearted maiden could be persuaded to accept thereof.

“Ah,” said the Earl, smiling, “I comprehend.  There is some maid in the question, and if I advance you to the command of my house-guard and give you an officer’s responsibility, you will of a surety be ever desiring to go gadding to the greenwood—­and around the loch of Carlinwark are most truly dangerous glades.”

“Nay, indeed nay,” cried Sholto, eagerly.  “If it is my lord’s will to appoint me to his guard, by Saint Bride and all the other saints I swear never to leave the island, unless it be sometimes of a Sunday afternoon for an hour or two—­just to see my mother.”

“Your mother!” quoth the Earl, laughing heartily.  “So then my two golden hearts are in your mother’s keeping.  Art a good lad, Sholto, and as for guile it is simply not in thee!”

Sholto looked modestly down upon the earth, as if conscious of his own exceeding merits, but willing for the nonce to say nothing about them.  But the young Earl came over to him, and dealing him a sound buffet on the back, cried:  “Nay, lad, that lamb-like look I have seen tried on mine uncle the Abbot of Sweetheart.  Thy brother Laurence is in the way of clerkly advancement on account of that same sweetly innocent regard, which he hath in even greater perfection.  But I am a young man, remember—­and one youth flings not glamour easily into the eyes of another.  Sholto, neither you nor I are any better than we should be, and if we are not so evil as some others, let us not set up as overwhelmingly virtuous.  For at twenty virtue is mostly but lack of opportunity.”

Sholto blushed so becomingly at this accusation that if the Earl had not seen the brothers locked in the death grip like crabs in a fishwife’s creel, even he might have been deceived.

“Nevertheless,” continued the Earl, “in spite of your claims to virtue, I am resolved to make you officer of my castle-guard—­if not in name, at least in fact.  For old Landless Jock of Abernethy must keep the name while he lives, and stand first when my steward pays out the chuckling golden Lions at Whitsun and eke Lady Day.  But you shall have enough and be no longer a charge upon your father.  Malise should be a proud man, having both his sons provided for in one day.”