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"You are sure you will not forget me, Sholto?" she said; "you will love me as much to-morrow when you are far away, and think me as fair as you do when you hold me thus in your arms upon the battlements of Thrieve?" Before Sholto had time to answer, the trumpet rang out again, with a call more instant and imperious than before.
"I think you and I, Master-Armourer, could send out a better coinage than that with the old Groat press over there at Thrieve!" he said. Malise smiled his quiet smile. "If the Earl of Douglas deigns to make me the master of his mint, I promise him plenty of good, sound, broad pieces of a noble design that is, till Chancellor Crichton hangs me for coining in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh."
The long files of horsemen threaded their way across the green plain of the isle towards the open space in front of Thrieve Castle, the points of their spears shining high in the air, and the shafts so thick underneath that, seen from a distance, they made a network of slender lines reticulated against the brightness of the sun.
He found the Earl walking swiftly up and down a little raised platform which extended round three sides of Thrieve, outside the main defences, but yet within the nether moat, the sluggish water of which it over-looked on its inner side.
But still Sholto stood where his master had left him, looking at the green scum of duckweed which floated on the surface of the moat of Thrieve, yet of a truth seeing nothing whatever, till a low voice pierced the abstraction of his reverie. "Sir Sholto!" said Mistress Maud Lindesay, "I bid you a long good-by, Sir Sholto MacKim! Say farewell to him, Margaret, as you hear me do!"
At last they came to the muster of the clean-run limber lads of Kelton, artificers mostly, and stated retainers of the castle and its various adjacent bourgs of Carlinwark, Rhonehouse, Gelston, and Mains of Thrieve. Some one at this point took the Abbot by the elbow and shouted in his ear that this was the company he desired to see.
The great island strength of the Douglases was then in its highest state of perfection as a fortress and of dignity as a residence. Archibald the Grim, who built the keep, could not have foreseen the wondrous beauty and strength to which Thrieve would attain under his successors.
But in one respect they differed from those which have been described at Castle Thrieve. There was no military pomp of any kind connected with them. The Chancellor studiously avoided all pretence of any other distinction than that belonging to a plain man whom circumstances have raised against his will to a position of responsibility.
The borderers replied by loud bleatings, which signified that they held the Galwegians of no better understanding than their native sheep. It was a strange and varied company which rode home to Thrieve to receive the hospitality of the young Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine.
For hae I no this day delivered to the bursar o' the castle o' Thrieve sax bales o' pepper and three o' the best spice, besides much cumin, alum, ginger, seat-well, almonds, rice, figs, raisins, and other sic thing. Moreover, there is owing to me, for wine and vinegar, mair than twa hunder pound. Was that no enough to gar me tak a 'dwam' when ye spoke o' the great nobles no payin'!"
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