The Earl summoned his victorious cousins, William and James, to ride with him and the tourney’s Queen of Beauty.  But William proved even more silent than usual, and his dark face and upright carriage caused him to sit his charger as if carved in iron.  Jolly James, on the other hand, attempted a jest or two which savoured rustically enough.  Nevertheless, he received the compliments of the Lady Sybilla on his courage and address with the equanimity of a practised soldier.  He was already, indeed, the best knight in Scotland, even as he was twelve years after when in the lists of Stirling he fought with the famous Messire Lalain, the Burgundian champion.

Earl William dropped behind to speak a moment with Sholto, and to give him the orders which he was to convey to the provost of the games with regard to the encounter of the morrow.

La Joyeuse took the opportunity of addressing her nearer and more silent companion.

“You are, I think, the head of the other Douglas House,” said the Lady Sybilla, glancing up at the stern and unbending Master of Avondale.

“There is but one house of Douglas, and but one head thereof,” replied Lord William, with a certain severity, and without looking at her.  The lady had the grace to blush, either with shame or with annoyance at the rebuff.

“Pardon,” she said, “you must remember that I am a foreigner.  I do not understand your genealogies.  I thought that even in France I had heard of the Black Douglas and the Red.”

“The Red and the Black alike are the liegemen of William of Douglas, whom Angus and Avondale both have the honour of serving,” answered he, still more uncompromisingly.

“Aye,” cried the jovial James, “cousin Will is the only chief, and will make a rare lance when he hath eaten a score or two more bolls of meal.”

The Earl William returned even as James was speaking.

“What is that I hear about bolls of meal?” he said; “what wots this fair damosel of our rude Scots measures for oats and bear?  You talk like the holder of a twenty-shilling land, James.”

“I was saying,” answered James Douglas, “that you would be a proper man of your lance when you had laid a score or two bolls of good Galloway meal to your ribs.  English beef and beer are excellent, and drive a lance home into an unarmed foe; but it needs good Scots oats at the back of the spear-haft to make the sparks fly when knight meets with knight and iron rings on iron.”

“Indeed, cousin Jamie,” said the Earl, “you have some right to your porridge, for this day you have overturned well nigh a score of good knights and come off unhurt and unashamed.  Cousin William, how liked you the whammel you got from James’ lance in your final course?”

“Not that ill,” said the silent Master; “I am indeed better at taking than at giving.  James is a stouter lance than I shall ever be—­”

“Not so,” cried jolly James.  “Our Will never doth himself justice.  He is for ever reading Deyrolles and John Froissard in order to learn new ways and tricks of fence, which he practises on the tilting ground, instead of riding with a tight knee and the weight of his body behind the shaft of ash.  That is what drives the tree home, and so he gets many a coup.  Yet to fall, and to be up and at it again, is by far the truer courage.”