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Our King's son desired his duchy, and promised to this man pardon for his evil deeds. I came to satisfy them both. On my guilty head be the punishment. It is true that I cozened and led you on. It is true that at Castle Thrieve I deceived you, knowing well that which would happen. I knew to what you would follow me, and for the sake of the evil wrought by your fathers, I was glad.
"Well, at least," cried Earl Douglas, "I will not have such brutes prowling about my castle of Thrieve even in my sister's dreams. Captain Sholto, do you station a man of your guard in the angle of the staircase where it looks along each corridor. Pick out your prettiest cross-bowmen, for it were not seemly that my guests should be disturbed by the rude shots and villanous reek of the fusil."
The morning was damp, dripping, and unpleasant; so I even made a work of necessity, and set to the Tales like a dragon. I murdered M'Lellan of Bomby at Thrieve Castle; stabbed the Black Douglas in the town of Stirling; astonished King James before Roxburgh; and stifled the Earl of Mar in his bath in the Canongate. A wild world, my masters, this Scotland of ours must have been.
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?"
In this fashion was Sholto MacKim placed in command of the house-guard of the castle of Thrieve. At parting with his father, the young captain received many wise and grave instructions, all of which he resolved to remember and profit by a resolution which he did not fail to keep for full five minutes.
But, on the other hand, lights were to be seen wandering this way and that over the long Isle of Thrieve, following the outlines of its winding shores, shining from the sterns of boats upon the pools of the Dee water, weaving intricately among the broomy braes on either side of the ford, and even streaming out across the water meadows of Balmaghie.
Their mother stood on the green moat platform of Thrieve, with their little sister Margaret holding up her train with a pretty modesty. She waved not a hand, fluttered no kerchief of farewell, only stood sadly watching the sons with whom she had travailed, like one who watches the dear dead borne to their last resting-place.
Douglas leaned back in his chair, and looked nonchalantly on like a spectator of a pageant. He continued to talk to the King easily and calmly, as if he were in his own Castle of Thrieve. But Sholto saw the white and ghastly look on the face of the Chancellor, and noted his hands nervously grip the table.
North, east, and west spear-heads glinted and armour flashed against the brown of the heather and the green of the little vales, wherein the horses bent their heads to pull at the meadow hay as their riders sought the nearest way back again to their peel-towers and forty-shilling lands. It was at the great gate of Thrieve that the Earl called aloud for Sholto.
It is perhaps over-responsible a post for so young a man, yet I myself am younger and have heavier burdens to bear. Also Landless Jock is growing old and stiff, and will not suffer to be spoken to. For my father's sake I cannot be severe with him. He will die in his charge if he will, but on Douglasdale and not at Thrieve.
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