The Black Douglas | Page 7

to you, What did the
robbers do to you, My fair lady?"
The first two lines rang out bold and clear. Then again the wistfulness
of the refrain played upon his heart as if it had been an instrument of
strings, till the tears came into his eyes at the wondrous sorrow and
yearning with which one voice, the sweetest and purest of all, replied,
singing quite alone:
"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold, My fair lady!"
The tears brimmed over in the eyes of William Douglas, and a deep
foreboding of the mysteries of fate fell upon his heart and abode there
heavy as doom.
He turned his head as though he felt a presence near him, and lo!
sudden and silent as the appearing of a phantom, another horse was
alongside of Black Darnaway, and upon a white palfrey a maiden
dressed also in white sat, smiling upon the young man, fair to look
upon as an angel from heaven.
Earl William's lips parted, but he was too surprised to speak.
Nevertheless, he moved his hand to his head in instinctive salutation;
but, finding his bonnet already off, he could only stare at the vision
which had so suddenly sprung out of the ground.
The lady slowly waved her hand in the direction of the children, whose
young voices still rang clear as cloister bells tolling out the Angelus,
and whose white dresses waved in the light wind as they danced back
and forth with a slow and graceful motion.
"You hear, Earl William," she said, in a low, thrilling voice, speaking
with a foreign accent, "you hear? You are a good Christian, doubtless,
and you have heard from your uncle, the Abbot, how praise is made
perfect 'out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.' Hark to them; they

sing of their own destinies--and it may be also of yours and mine."
And so fascinated and moved at heart at once by her beauty and by her
strange words, the Douglas listened.
"What did the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you, What did the
robbers do to you, My fair lady?"
The lady on the delicately pacing palfrey turned the darkness of her
eyes from the white-robed choristers to the face of the young man.
Then, with an impetuous motion of her hand, she urged him to listen
for the next words, which swept over Earl William's heart with a
cadence of unutterable pain and inexplicable melancholy.
"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold, My fair lady!"
He turned upon his companion with a quick energy, as if he were afraid
of losing himself again.
"Who are you, lady, and what do you here?"
The girl (for in years she was little more) smiled and reined her steed a
little back from him with an air at once prettily petulant and teasing.
"Is that spoken as William Douglas or as the Justicer of Galloway--a
country where, as I understand, there is no trial by jury?"
The light of a radiant smile passed from her lips into his soul.
"It is spoken as a man speaks to a woman beautiful and queenly," he
said, not removing his eyes from her face.
"I fear I may have startled you," she said, without continuing the
subject. "Even as I came I saw you were wrapped in meditation, and
my palfrey going lightly made no sound on the grass and leaves."
Her voice was so sweet and low that William Douglas, listening to it,
wished that she would speak on for ever.

"The hour grows late," he said, remembering himself. "You must have
far to ride. Let me be your escort homewards if you have none worthier
than I."
"Alas," she answered, smiling yet more subtly, "I have no home near
by. My home is very far and over many turbulent seas. I have but a
maiden's pavilion in which to rest my head. Yet since I and my
company must needs travel through your domains, Earl William, I trust
you will not be so cruel as to forbid us?"
"Yes,"--he was smiling now in turn, and catching somewhat of the gay
spirit of the lady,--"as overlord of all this province I do forbid you to
pass through these lands of Galloway without first visiting me in my
house of Thrieve!"
The lady clapped her hands and laughed, letting her palfrey pace
onwards through the woodland glades bridle free, while Black
Darnaway, compelled by his master's hand, followed, tossing his head
indignantly because it had been turned from the direction of his nightly
stable on the Castle Isle.
CHAPTER III