But David detained him with an impetuous hand.

“What is this?” he said; “you have set two archers on the stairs who have shot and almost killed the ambassador’s two servants, Poitou the man-at-arms, and Henriet the clerk, just because they wished to take the air upon the roof.  Nay, even when I would have visited my sister, I was not permitted—­’None passes here save the Earl himself, till our captain takes his orders off us!’ That was the word they spoke.  Was ever the like done in the castle of Thrieve to a Master of Douglas before?”

“I am sorry, my Lord David,” said Sholto, respectfully, “but there were matters within the knowledge of the Earl which caused him to lay this heavy charge upon me.”

“Well,” said the lad, quickly relenting, “let us go and see Margaret now.  She must have been lonely all this fair day of summer.”

But Sholto smiled, well pleased, thinking of Maud Lindesay.

“I would that I had a lifetime of such loneliness as Margaret’s hath been this day,” he said to himself.

At the turning of the stair they were stayed, for there, his foot advanced, his bow ready to deliver its steel bolt at the clicking of a trigger, stood Andro the Swarthy.

From his stance he commanded the stair and could see along the corridor as well.

David Douglas caught his elbow on something which stood a few inches out of the oaken panelling of the turnpike wall.  He tried to pull it out.  It was the steel quarrel of a cross-bow wedged firmly into the wood and masonry.  He cried:  “Whence came this?  Have you been murdering any other honest men?”

The archer stood silent, glancing this way and that like a sentinel on duty.  The two young men went on up the stair.

As their feet were approaching the sixth step, a sudden word came from the Penman like a bolt from his bow.

“Halt!” he cried, and they heard the gur-r-r-r of his steel ratchet.

Sholto smiled, for he knew the nature of the man.

“It is I, your captain,” he said.  “You have done your duty well, Andro the Penman.  Now get down to your dinner.  But first give an account of your adventures.”

“Do you relieve us from our charge?” said the archer, with his bow still at the ready.

“Certainly,” quoth Sholto.

“Come, Jock, we are eased,” cried Andro the Swarthy up the stair, and he slid the steel bolt out of its grip with a little click; “faith, my belly is toom as a last year’s beef barrel.”

“Did any come hither to vex you?” asked Sholto.

“Not to speak of,” said the archer; “there were, indeed, two varlets of the Frenchmen, and as they would not take a bidding to stand, I had perforce to send a quarrel buzzing past their lugs into the wall.  You can see it there behind you.”

“Rascal,” cried David Douglas, indignantly, “you do not say that first of all you shot it through the arm of the poor clerk Henriet.”