"What does the man mean?
_Even_ to-night! I've a good mind to order you to the watch to-night for talking in riddles, sirrah!" "The watch here has always been a double one since I can remember," put in auld Geordie.
"To my mind, one man ought to be able to watch as well as two, for the matter of that.

And so, Tam, you mean you would be more comfortable with a comrade on the east terrace to-night.

Perhaps Sir David would oblige you," he added, with a laugh.
The soldier flushed angrily.
"Ay, you may say that," he muttered, in an undertone; "it's more than likely Sir David _will_ be walking to-night." The boy caught these last words, and glanced quickly at the speaker.
The meaning of these mysterious utterances suddenly flashed upon him.
These men, then mistook him, their chief, their captain, for a coward! A crimson flush suffused his face, a flush of shame and anger, as he sprang to his feet.
At that instant, and before he could utter a word, a bugle sounded at the gate, and there entered the hall a soldier whose appearance bore every mark of desperate haste.
"Singleton," he cried, as he entered, "the king's friends are up! Glencairn musters his men at daybreak at Scotsboro', and expects the thirty men of the Singletons promised him, there and then!" Here was a piece of news! The long-wished-for summons had come at last, and the heart of each Singleton present beat high at the prospect of battle! And yet in the midst of their elation a serious difficulty presented itself.
"Thirty men!" said Geordie, looking round him.

"Why there are but thirty-one men here, counting the laird.

Some must stay." But the young laird, who had noticed the same thing, cried out promptly to the messenger-- "Tell your general he shall have his thirty men before dawn," and with that the soldier withdrew.
The joy of the Singletons now gave place to something like panic, as they comprehended what the rash pledge of their young chief really meant.