"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold,
My fair lady!"

The tears brimmed over in the eyes of William Douglas, and a deep foreboding of the mysteries of fate fell upon his heart and abode there heavy as doom.

He turned his head as though he felt a presence near him, and lo! sudden and silent as the appearing of a phantom, another horse was alongside of Black Darnaway, and upon a white palfrey a maiden dressed also in white sat, smiling upon the young man, fair to look upon as an angel from heaven.

Earl William’s lips parted, but he was too surprised to speak.  Nevertheless, he moved his hand to his head in instinctive salutation; but, finding his bonnet already off, he could only stare at the vision which had so suddenly sprung out of the ground.

The lady slowly waved her hand in the direction of the children, whose young voices still rang clear as cloister bells tolling out the Angelus, and whose white dresses waved in the light wind as they danced back and forth with a slow and graceful motion.

“You hear, Earl William,” she said, in a low, thrilling voice, speaking with a foreign accent, “you hear?  You are a good Christian, doubtless, and you have heard from your uncle, the Abbot, how praise is made perfect ‘out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.’  Hark to them; they sing of their own destinies—­and it may be also of yours and mine.”

And so fascinated and moved at heart at once by her beauty and by her strange words, the Douglas listened.

"What did the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you,
What did the robbers do to you,
My fair lady?"

The lady on the delicately pacing palfrey turned the darkness of her eyes from the white-robed choristers to the face of the young man.  Then, with an impetuous motion of her hand, she urged him to listen for the next words, which swept over Earl William’s heart with a cadence of unutterable pain and inexplicable melancholy.

"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold,
My fair lady!"

He turned upon his companion with a quick energy, as if he were afraid of losing himself again.

“Who are you, lady, and what do you here?”

The girl (for in years she was little more) smiled and reined her steed a little back from him with an air at once prettily petulant and teasing.

“Is that spoken as William Douglas or as the Justicer of Galloway—­a country where, as I understand, there is no trial by jury?”

The light of a radiant smile passed from her lips into his soul.

“It is spoken as a man speaks to a woman beautiful and queenly,” he said, not removing his eyes from her face.

“I fear I may have startled you,” she said, without continuing the subject.  “Even as I came I saw you were wrapped in meditation, and my palfrey going lightly made no sound on the grass and leaves.”