Yet to fall, and to be up and at it again, is by far the truer courage." The Lady Sybilla laughed, as it seemed, heartily, yet with some little bitterness in the sound of it.
"I declare you Douglases stick together like crabs in a basket.
Cousins in France do not often love each other so well.

You are fortunate in your relations, my Lord Duke." "Indeed, and that I am," cried the young man, joyously.

"Here be my cousins, William and James--Will ever ready to read me out of wise books and advise me better than any clerk, Jamie aching to drive lance through any man's midriff in my quarrel." "Lord, I would that I had the chance!" cried James.

"Saint Bride! but I would make a hole clean through him and out at the back, though my elbuck should dinnle for a week after." 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.
* * * * * In an hour Sholto followed them, having ridden fast and furious across the long broomy braes of Boreland, and wet the fringes of his charger's silken coverture by vaingloriously swimming the Dee at the castle pool instead of going round by the fords.

This he did in the hope that Maud Lindesay might see him.