LITMIR.BIZ

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you meet in a distant land. He asks you for a gage to carry with him to the wars, a badge fragrant of his lady and his love, and you give him – an odd glove of his cousin's wife's. Truly an idea most quaint and meritorious!"

      "And Maisie," said Kate, solemnly, looking up at her with her head still on her hands, "would you believe it? He stamped his foot and threw the glove out of the window there into the canal! He ought not to have done that, ought he?"

      "My Kate," said her friend, "do not forget that I am no longer a girl, but a woman wedded – "

      "Six months," interrupted Kate McGhie, a little mischievously.

      "And when I see the brave lass with whom, in another and a dearer land, I came through so many perils, in danger of letting foolish anger wrong both herself and another, you will forgive me if I have a word to say. I speak because I have come in peace to the goal of my own loving. Wat loves you. I am sure of that. Can you not tell me what it is that you have against him? No great matter, surely; for, though reckless and headstrong beyond most, the lad is yet honest, up-standing, true."

      Kate McGhie was silent for a while, only leaning her head a little harder against the caressing hand.

      Then, with her face bent down, she spoke, softly:

      "In Scotland he loved me not, but only the making of love. If so be that Wat Gordon will love me here in the Lowlands of Holland, he must do it like one that loves for death or life; not like a gay gallant that makes love to every maid in town, all for dalliance in a garden pleasaunce on a summer's day."

      The girl drew herself up nearer to her friend's face. Maisie Lennox, on her part, quietly leaned over and laid her cheek against Kate's. It was damp where a cherry-great tear had rolled down it. Maisie understood, but said nothing. She only pressed her gossip a little closer and waited. In a while Kate's arms went gently round about her neck, and her face drew yet a little nearer to the listening ear.

      "Once," she whispered, "I feared that I was in danger of loving him first and most – and that he but played with me. I feared it much," she went on, with a little return of the low sob, which caused her friend's arms to clasp themselves more tightly about her, "I feared that I might learn to love him too soon. So that is the reason – why —I hate him now!"

      CHAPTER III

      THE BULL, THE CALF, AND THE KILLER

      Wat Lochinvar rode out of the city of Amersfort with anger humming fierce in his heart, the Black Horseman riding pickaback behind him. He paid little attention to the three cutthroat-looking knaves who had been provided as his escort, till the outer port of the city gates had closed behind him and the chill airs of the outlands, unwarmed by friendly civic supper-fires, met him shrilly in the teeth.

      He had been played with, tricked, betrayed, so he told himself. Never more would he think of her – the light trifler with men's hearts. She might gang her own wilful gait for him; but there was one thing he was well assured of – never more would Wat Gordon trust any woman born of woman, never speak a word of love to one of the fickle breed again. On this he was resolved like steel. For him, henceforth, only the stern elation of combat, the clatter of harness, the joy of the headlong charge – point to point, eye to eye, he would meet his man, when neither would be afraid of aught, save of yielding or craving a favor. From that day forth his sword should be his love, his regiment his married wife, his cause and king his family; while his faithful charger, nuzzling against his breast, would bestow on him the only passionate caresses he would ever know, until on some stricken field it was his fate to fill a soldier's grave.

      Almost could Walter Gordon have wept in his saddle to think of his wrongs, and death seemed a sweet thing to him beside the fickle favors of any woman. He bethought him of his cousin Will with something of a pitying smile.

      "Poor fool!" he said to himself; "he is married. He thinks himself happy. How much better had it been to live for glory!"

      But even as he battered himself into a conviction of his own rooted indifference to the things of love, he began to wonder how long his present adventure would detain him. Could he be back in time on the morrow to hear the first trip of a light foot on the stairs in Zaandpoort Street, as she came from her sleeping-room, fresh as though God had made her all anew that morning?

      For this is a quality of the wisdom of man, that thinking upon a maid ofttimes makes it vain – especially if the man be very brave or very wise, and the maid exceeding fair. Gradually, however, the changing clatter of the dozen hoofs behind Lochinvar forced itself upon his hearing, and he remembered that he was not alone.

      He turned to his followers, and, curbing his horse a little, waited for them to come up. They ranged themselves two on one side of him and one on the other. Lochinvar eyed them with surprising disfavor.

      "You are surely the last scourings of the camp," he said, brusquely, for it was too little his habit to beat about the bush; "what may you have been doing with yourselves? You could not all three have been made so unhallowedly ugly as that. After all, God is a good God, and kind to the evil and to the good."

      The fellow on Lochinvar's left was a great red-faced man with an immense scar, where (as it appeared) one side of his face had been cut away wellnigh to the cheek-bone – a wound which had healed unevenly in ridges and weals, and now remained of a deep plum-color.

      "What is your name?" said Lochinvar to this man.

      "I am called Haxo the Bull," he answered, "and I am of the retinue of my Lord of Barra."

      "And how came you by your English?" asked Lochinvar.

      "My mother always declared that my father was of that nation," answered the man, readily enough.

      "To conclude," continued Wat, who was impatient of further conference with such rank knaves, "what might be your distinguished rank in the service of my Lord of Barra?"

      "I am his camp butcher," said the man, laying his hand on a long, keen knife which swung at his belt on the opposite side from his sword.

      "And these other two gentlemen, your honorable companions?" queried Wat, indicating them over his shoulder with contemptuous thumb.

      The hulking fellow of the scar made a gesture with his shoulders, which said as plain as might be, "They are of age; ask themselves."

      But the nearer of the two did not wait to be asked. He was a hairless, flaccid-faced rogue of a pasty gray complexion, and even uglier than the plum-colored Bull, with a certain intact and virgin hideousness of his own.

      "I, for my part, am called Haxo's Calf, and I am not ashamed of the name!" he said.

      And, thinking this an excellent jest, he showed a row of teeth like those of a hungry dog when he snatches a bone from a comrade not his equal in the fray.

      "And, I doubt not, a fit calf of such a sire," quoth Lochinvar, looking from one to the other.

      "He is my apprentice, not my son – praise to the Virgin and all the saints!" said Haxo, looking at the Calf quite as scornfully as Wat himself.

      Lochinvar now transferred his attention to the third. He wore a small round cap on the top of his head, and his narrow and meagre forehead ran back shining and polished to the nape of his neck. His lack-lustre eyes were set curiously at different angles in his head. He had thin lips, which parted nervously over black, gaping teeth, and his nose was broken as if with a blow of a hammer.

      "And is this gentleman also of Monsieur Haxo's gallant company, and in the suite of his Excellency my Lord of Barra?"

      Haxo nodded his head with some appreciation of Wat's penetration.

      "He is, indeed," he said; "he is my chief slaughterman, and a prince at his business."

      "He is called 'The Killer,'" interjected the Calf, smacking his lips with unction. "It is a good name for him."

      Wat Gordon urged his horse onward with great and undisguised disgust. To be sent on a dangerous mission with three such arrant rascals told him the value that his employers set upon his life. And if he had chanced at that moment to turn him about in his saddle, the evil smile of triumph which passed simultaneously over the faces of his companions might have told

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