The Black Douglas | Page 9

colour down her graceful neck. Dark eyes shone above, fresh and dewy
with love and youth, and smiled out with all ancientest witcheries and
allurements in their depths. Her lithe, slender body was simply clad in a
fair white cloth of some foreign fabric, and her waist, of perfectest
symmetry, was cinctured by a broad ring of solid silver, which, to the
young man, looked so slender that he could have clasped it about with
both his hands.
So they rode on, through the woods mostly, until they reached a region
which to the Earl appeared unfamiliar. The glades were greener and
denser. The trees seemed more primeval, the foliage thicker overhead,
the interspaces of the golden evening sky darker and less frequent.
"In what place may your company be assembled?" he asked. "Strange it
is that I know not this spot. Yet I should recognise each tree by conning
it, and of every rivulet in Galloway I should be able to tell the name.
Yet with shame do I confess that I know not where I am."
"Ah," said the girl, her face growing luminous through the gloom, "you
called me a witch, and now you shall see. I wave my hands, so--and
you are no more in Galloway. You are in the land of faëry. I blow you a
kiss, so--and lo! you are no more William, sixth Earl of Douglas and
proximate Duke of Touraine, but you are even as True Thomas, the
Beloved of the Queen of the Fairies, and the slave of her spell!"
"I am indeed well content to be Thomas Rhymer," he answered,
submitting himself to the wooing glamour of her eyes, "so be that you
are the Lady of the milk-white hind!"
"A courtier indeed," she laughed; "you need not to seek your answer.
You make a poor girl afraid. But see, yonder are the lights of my

pavilion. Will it please you to alight and enter? The supper will be
spread, and though you must not expect any to entertain you, save only
this your poor Queen Mab" (here she made him a little bow), "yet I
think you will not be ill content. They do not say that Thomas of
Ercildoune had any cause for complaint. Do you know," she continued,
a fresh gaiety striking into her voice, "it was in this very wood that he
was lost."
But William Douglas sat silent with the wonder of what he saw. Their
horses had all at once come out on a hilltop. The sequestered boskage
of the trees had gradually thinned, finally dwarfing into a green drift of
fern and birchen foliage which rose no higher than Black Darnaway's
chest, and through which his rider's laced boots brushed till the Spanish
leather of their gold-embossed frontlets was all jetted with gouts of
dew.
Before him swept horizonwards a great upward drift of solemn pine
trees, the like of which for size he had never seen in all his domain. Or
so, at least, it seemed in that hour of mystery and glamour. For behind
them the evening sky had dulled to a deep and solemn wash of blood
red, across which lay one lonely bar of black cloud, solid as spilled ink
on a monkish page. But under the trees themselves, blazing with lamps
and breathing odours of all grace and daintiness, stood a lighted
pavilion of rose-coloured silk, anchored to the ground with ropes of
sendal of the richest crimson hue.
"Let your horse go free, or tether him to a pine; in either case he will
not wander far," said the girl. "I fear my fellows have gone off to lay in
provisions. We have taken a day or two more on the way than we had
counted on, so that to-night's feast makes an end of our store. But still
there is enough for two. I bid you welcome, Earl William, to a
wanderer's tent. There is much that I would say to you."
CHAPTER IV
THE ROSE-RED PAVILION
As the young Earl paused a moment without to tether Black Darnaway

to a fallen trunk of a pine, a chill and melancholy wind seemed to rise
suddenly and toss the branches dark against the sky. Then it flew off
moaning like a lost spirit, till he could hear the sound of its passage far
down the valley. An owl hooted and a swart raven disengaged himself
from the coppice about the door of the pavilion, and fluttered away
with a croak of disdainful anger. Black Darnaway turned his head and
whinnied anxiously after his master.
But William Douglas, though little more than a boy if men's ages are to
be counted by years, was yet a true child of Archibald the Grim, and he
passed through the mysterious encampment to