CHAPTER II.
MY FAIR LADY The strong man of Carlinwark made no long job of the horseshoeing.
For, as he hammered and filed, he marked the eye of the young Earl restlessly straying this way and that along the green riverside paths, and his fingers nervously tapping the ashen casing of the smithy window-sill.

Malise MacKim smiled to himself, for he had not served a Douglas for thirty years without knowing by these signs that there was the swing of a kirtle in the case somewhere.
Presently the last nail was made firm, and Black Darnaway was led, passaging and tossing his bridle reins, out upon the green sward.
Malise stood at his head till the Douglas swung himself into the saddle with a motion light as the first upward flight of a bird.
He put his hand into a pocket in the lining of his "soubreveste" and took out a golden "Lion" of the King's recent mintage.

He spun it in the air off his thumb and then looked at it somewhat contemptuously as he caught it.
"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." "That would he never, with the Douglas lances to prick you a way out and the Douglas gold to buy the good-will of traitorous judges!" Half unconsciously the Earl sighed as he looked at the fair lake growing rosy in the light of the sunset.

His boyish face was overspread with care, and for the moment seemed all too young to have inherited so great a burden.

But the next moment he was himself again.
"I know, Malise," he said, "that I cannot offer you gold in return for your admirable handicraft.