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"Ho, guard, there!" he cried, "seize me this instant the Abbot of the New Abbey and Malise MacKim." And so much surprised but wholly obedient, twenty archers of the Earl's guard, commanded by old John of Abernethy, called Landless Jock, fell in at back and front. Malise, the master armourer, stood silent, taking the matter with his usual phlegm, but the Abbot was voluble.
Sholto MacKim, throwing all the consciousness of a shining success into the stiffness of the neck which upheld the slight additional weight of the Earl's gold buckle in his cap, found himself, not wholly by accident, in the neighbourhood of his heart's beloved, Maud Lindesay. For, like a valiant seneschal, she had kept her place all day close beside the Fair Maid of Galloway.
"Moreover," said the Earl, "that you may suitably support the knighthood which your sword has won, I freely bestow on you the forty-shilling lands of Aireland and Lincolns with Screel and Ben Gairn, on condition that you and yours shall keep the watch-fires laid ready for the lighting, and that in time you rear you sturdy yeomen to bear in the Douglas train the banneret of MacKim of Aireland."
There we will see if you will flap your wings so boldly." Laurence could not help noticing the blank alarm which this announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the ancient game of brag. It was Blaise Renouf who first recovered. He looked across the little rose-grown space of the cloister to see that Henriet had turned his back, and then came quickly up to Laurence MacKim.
But this solitary lodging in the wilderness had been enlarged in more recent times, till now the interior was about eight feet square and of the height of a man of stature when he stands erect. The hearts of the three present cave-dwellers were sick and sad, and of them all the bitterest was the heart of Sholto MacKim.
"That will teach you to think rather of the eyes of Laurence MacKim!" cried Sholto, and without more ado he hit his brother with his clinched knuckles a fair blow on the bridge of his nose. The next moment the two youths were grappling together like wild cats, striking, kicking, and biting with no thought except of who should have the best of the battle.
But the brothers MacKim were not the lads to take beating with a stick meekly, and the provost, who indeed had nothing to do with the Galloway part of the encampment, had far better have confined his officiousness to his own quarters. "Take him on the right, Sholto," cried Laurence, "and I will have at him from this side."
But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified. The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France. The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fashion.
Suddenly tossed backwards like a ball from lip to lip, according to the universal and, indeed, obligatory custom of the time, there reached him the "passing of the word." He heard his own name repeated over and over in fifty voices and tones, waxing louder as the "word" neared him. "Sholto MacKim Sholto MacKim, son of Malise, the armourer, wanted to speak with the Earl. Sholto MacKim. Sholto "
The son of Malise MacKim gripped himself, as it were, with both hands, and turned a face pale as marble to look into the grim countenance which hid the soul of the Lord of Machecoul. Gilles de Retz appeared to peruse each feature of the boy's person as if he read in a book.
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