The squires were well matched.  These fought on foot, armed according to custom with sword, axe, and dagger—­though Sholto would much have preferred to trust to his arrow skill even against the plate of the knights.

The trumpets blew their warning from the judge’s gallery.  The six opposing knights laid their lances in rest.  The squires leaned a little forward as if about to run a race.  Lord Maxwell raised his truncheon.  The trumpets sounded again, and as their stirring taran-tara rang down the wide strath of Dee, the riders spurred their horses into full career.  It so chanced that, as they had stood, James of Avondale was opposite the Earl, each being in the midst as was their right as leaders.  The Master of Avondale opposed his brother Hugh, and the Marshal de Retz couched spear against young Alan Fleming.  In this order they started to ride their course.  But at the last moment, instead of riding straight for his man, the Frenchman swerved to the left, and, raising his lance high in the air, he threw it in the manner of his country straight at the visor bars of the young Earl of Douglas.  The spear of James of Avondale at the same time taking him fair in the middle of his shield, the double assault caused the young man to fall heavily from his saddle, so that the crash sounded dully over the field.

“Treachery!  Treachery!—­A foul false stroke!  A knave’s device!” cried nine-tenths of those who were crowded about the barriers.  “Stop the fight!  Kill the Frenchman!”

“Not so,” cried Lord Maxwell, “they were to fight as best they could, and they must fight it to the end!”

And this being a decision not to be gainsaid, the combat proceeded on very unequal terms.  Sholto, who had been eagerly on the stretch to match himself with the squire of James of Avondale, the young knight of the Bass, found himself suddenly astride of his lord’s body and defending himself against both the French ambassador and his squire Poitou, who had simultaneously crossed over to the attack.  For the Marshal de Retz, if not in complete defiance of the written rule of chivalry, at least against the spirit of gallantry and the rules of the present tourney, would have thrust the Earl through with his spear as he lay, crying at the same time, “A outrance!  A outrance!” to excuse the foulness of his deed.

It was lucky for himself that he did not succeed, for, undoubtedly, the Douglases then on the field would have torn him to pieces for what they not unnaturally considered his treachery.  As it was, there sounded a mighty roar of anger all about the barriers, and the crowd pressed so fiercely and threateningly that it was as much as the archers could do to keep them within reasonable bounds.

“Saints’ mercy!” puffed stout Ninian Halliburton, “let us get out of this place.  I am near bursen.  Haud off there, varlet, ken ye not that I am a Bailie of Dumfries?  Keep your feet off the tail o’ my brown velvet gown.  It cost nigh upon twenty silver shillings an ell!”