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We have never had either witch or warlock about the house of Thrieve since the old Abbot Gawain laid the ghost of Archibald the Grim with four-and-forty masses, said without ever breaking his fast, down there in the castle chapel." "Nay, ask me not," answered Sholto, "I am little skilled in matters spiritual.
But that night, save about the chamber where abode the mother of the Douglases, the hum of life never ceased in the great Castle of Thrieve. Whether my lady slept or not, God knows. At any rate the door was closed and there was silence within. Sholto awoke smiling in the early dawn. He had been dreaming that he and Maud Lindesay were walking on the shore together.
The words were clear enough, but in a language not understood by Sholto MacKim. They seemed intelligible enough, however, to the Earl. "I knew it," he cried; "the false hounds have imprisoned her also. It is Sybilla's voice. God in heaven they are torturing her!" He ran to the door and shook it vehemently. "Ho! Without there!" he cried imperiously, as if in his own Castle at Thrieve.
Sholto also was early astir, for the affairs of the castle and of the host were in his hand, and there was much business to be despatched that morning. The young Avondale Douglases were riding away from Thrieve, for word had come that James the Gross, seventh Earl of Douglas, was surely at death's door. "Besides," said William Douglas, "wherefore should we stay our work is done.
"Grievous as my sin has been, and just as is your resentment, give me leave to say that I have suffered more than my deserts from the ill-made chains and uncouth manacles wherewith they confined me in the black dungeon down there. I trow they must have been the workmanship of Ninian Lamont the Highlandman, who dares to call himself house-smith of Thrieve.
At sight of her he leaped from his horse, and, without salutation of spoken speech, walked by her side. "How came you here alone?" he asked. Maud made her little pouting movement of the lips, and kicked viciously at a tuft of grass. "I forgot," she said hypocritically, "I ought to have asked leave of that noble knight the Captain of Thrieve.
This was the letter which, along with the Chancellor's invitations, came to the hand of the Earl William as he rode forth to the deer-hunting one morning from his Castle of Thrieve: "My lord, if it be not that you have wholly forgotten me and your promise, this comes to inform you that my uncle and I purpose to abide at the Castle of Crichton for ten days before finally departing forth of this land.
So talking together, but with the lady riding more silent and somewhat constrainedly in their midst, the three cousins of Douglas passed the drawbridge and came again to the precincts of the noble towers of Thrieve.
"Oh, William, and there is such news; I forgot, because I have been so overbusied with arranging my new puppet's house that Malise made for me. But scarcely were you gone away on Black Darnaway ere a messenger came from our granduncle James at Avondale that he and my cousins Will and James arrive to-morrow at the Thrieve with a company to attend the wappenshaw."
"I have but one counsel, Sir Knight. Think no more of your master. Let the dead bury their dead. Ride to Thrieve and never once lose sight of her whom you call your sweetheart, nor yet of her charge, Margaret Douglas, the Maid of Galloway, till the snow falls and winter comes upon the land."
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