“Strike hard, and fear not!” he cried to an old retainer, who stirred not from his side; “divide this heavy staff, and I will yet protect my charge, and thou and I, Donald, will to King Robert’s side; he needs all true men about him now.”

Even as he spoke his command was understood and obeyed.  One sweep of the stout Highlander’s battle-axe severed full four feet of the heavy lance to which the standard was attached and enabled Alan without any inconvenience to grasp in his left hand the remainder, from which the folds still waved:  grasping his sword firmly in his right, and giving his horse the rein, shouting, “Comyn, to the rescue!” he darted towards the side where the strife waxed hottest.

It was a cry which alike startled friends and foes, for that name was known to one party as so connected with devotee adherence to Edward, to the other so synonymous with treachery, that united as it was with “to the rescue,” some there were who paused to see whence and from whom it came.  The banner of Scotland quickly banished doubt as to which part; that youthful warrior belonged; knights and yeomen alike threw themselves in his path to obtain possession of so dear a prize.  Followed by about ten stalwart men of his clan, the young knight gallantly cut his way through the greater number of his opponents, but a sudden gleam on the helmet of one of them caused him to halt suddenly.

“Ha!  Sir Henry Seymour, we have met at length!” he shouted.  “Thou bearest yet my gage—­’tis well.  I am here to redeem it.”

“Give up that banner to a follower, then,” returned Sir Henry, courteously, checking his horse in its full career, “for otherwise we meet at odds.  Thou canst not redeem thy gage, and defend thy charge at the same moment.”

“Give up my charge!  Never, so help me heaven!  Friend or foe shall claim it but with my life,” returned Alan, proudly.  “Come on, sir knight; I am here to defend the honor thou hast injured—­the honor of one dearer than my own.”

“Have then thy will, proud boy:  thy blood be on thine own head,” replied Seymour; but ere he spurred on to the charge, he called aloud, “let none come between us, none dare to interfere—­’tis a quarrel touching none save ourselves,” and Alan bowed his head, in courteous recognition of the strict observance of the rules of chivalry in his adversary, at the very moment that he closed with him in deadly strife; and such was war in the age of chivalry, and so strict were its rules, that even with the standard of Scotland in his hand, the person of the heir of Buchan was sacred to all save to his particular opponent.