at that, riding weary ill-conditioned beasts. The nag which the third led was a mere rickle of bones. And yet to David’s eye there was that about them which belied their apparent rank. They had spoken in the country way, but their tones were not those of countrymen. They had not the air of a gaunt Jock or a round-faced Tam from the plough-tail. All three were slim and the hands which grasped the bridles were notably fine. They held themselves straight like courtiers, and in their voices lurked a note as of men accustomed to command. The leader was a dark man with a weary thin face and great circles round his eyes; the second a tall fellow, with a tanned skin, a cast in his left eye and a restless dare-devil look; the third, who seemed to be their groom, had so far not spoken and had stood at the back with the led horse, but David had a glimpse above his ragged doublet of a neat small moustache and a delicate chin. ‘Leven has good blood in his ranks,’ he thought, ‘for these three never came out of a but-and-ben.’ Moreover, the ordinary trooper on his way home would not make Calidon a house of call.
He led them up to the glen road, intending to give them directions about their way, but there he found that his memory had betrayed him. He knew exactly in which nook of hill lay Calidon, but for the life of him he could not remember how the track ran to it.
‘I’ll have to be your guide, sirs,’ he told them. ‘I can take you to Calidon, but I cannot tell you how to get there.’
‘We’re beholden to you, sir, but it’s a sore burden on your good-nature. Does your own road lie in the airt?’
The young man laughed. ‘The night is fine and I’m in no haste to be in bed. I’ll have you at Calidon door in half an hour.’
Presently he led them off the road across a patch of heather, forded Rood at a shallow, and entered a wood of birches. The going was bad and the groom with the led horse had the worst of it. The troopers were humane men, for they seemed to have a curious care of their servant. It was ‘Canny now, James—there’s bog on the left,’ or ‘Take tent of that howe’; and once or twice, when there was a difficult passage, one or the other would seize the bridle of the led horse till the groom had passed. David saw from the man’s face that he was grey with fatigue.
‘Get you on my beast,’ he said, ‘and I’ll hold the bridle. I can find my way better on foot. And do you others each take a led horse. The road we’re travelling is none so wide, and we’ll make better speed that way.’
The troopers docilely did as they were bidden, and the weary groom was hoisted on David’s grey gelding. The change seemed to ease him and he lost his air of heavy preoccupation and let his eyes wander. The birch wood gave place to a bare hillside, where even the grey slipped among the screes and the four horses behind sprawled and slithered. They crossed a burn, surmounted another ridge, and entered a thick wood of oak which David knew cloaked the environs of Calidon and which made dark travelling even in the strong moonlight. Great boulders were hidden in the moss, withered boughs hung low over the path, and now and then would come a patch of scrub so dense that it had to be laboriously circumvented. The groom on the grey was murmuring to himself, and to David’s amazement it was Latin. ‘Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram,’ were the words he spoke.
David capped them:
Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna,
Quale per incertam lunam ….
The man on the horse laughed, and David, looking up, had his first proper sight of his face. It was a long face, very pale, unshaven and dirty, but it was no face of a groom. The thin aquiline nose, the broad finely arched brow, were in themselves impressive, but the dominant feature was the eyes. They seemed to be grey—ardent, commanding, and yet brooding. David was so absorbed by this sudden vision that he tripped over a stone and almost pulled the horse down.
‘I did not look,’ said the rider, in a voice low-pitched and musical, ‘I did not look to find a scholar in these hills.’
‘Nor did I know,’ said David, ‘that Virgil was the common reading of Leven’s men.’
They had reached a field of wild pasture studded with little thorns, in the middle of which stood a great stone dovecot. A burn falling in a deep ravine made a moat on one side of the tower of Calidon, which now rose white like marble in the moon. They crossed the ravine not without trouble, and joined the main road from the glen, which ended in a high-arched gate round which clustered half a dozen huts.
At the sound of their arrival men ran out of the huts and one seized the bridle of the leader. David and the groom had now fallen back, and it was the dark man who did the talking. These were strange troopers, for they sat their horses like princes, so that the hand laid on the bridle was promptly dropped.
‘We would speak with the laird of Calidon,’ the dark man said. ‘Stay, carry this ring to him. He will know what it means.’ It seemed curious to David that the signet given to the man was furnished by the groom.
In five minutes the servant returned. ‘The laird waits on ye, sirs. I’ll tak’ the beasts, and your mails, if ye’ve ony. Through the muckle yett an it please ye.’
David turned to go. ‘I’ve brought you to Calidon,’ he said, ‘and now I’ll take my leave.’
‘No, no,’ cried the dark man. ‘You’ll come in and drink a cup after the noble convoy you’ve given us. Nicholas Hawkshaw will be blithe to welcome you.’
David would have refused, for the hour was already late and he was many miles from Woodilee, had not the groom laid his hand on his arm. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I would see my friend, the student of Virgil, in another light than the moon,’ and to his amazement the young man found that it was a request which he could not deny. There was a compelling power in that quiet face, and he was strangely loth to part from it.
The four dismounted, the three troopers staggering with stiff bones. The dark man’s limp did not change after the first steps, and David saw that he was crippled in the left leg. They passed through the gate into a courtyard, beyond which rose the square massif of the tower. In the low doorway a candle wavered, under a stone which bore the hawk in lure which was the badge of the house.
The three men bowed low to the candle, and David saw that it was held by a young girl.
‘Will you enter, sirs?’ said the girl. She was clad in some dark homespun stuff with a bright-coloured screen thrown over her head and shoulders. She held the light well in front of her, so that David could not see her face. He would fain have taken his leave, for it seemed strange to be entering Calidon thus late at e’en in the company of strangers, but the hand of the groom on his arm restrained him. ‘You will drink a stirrup-cup, friend. The night is yet young and the moon is high.’
A steep stairway ran upward a yard or two from the doorway. Calidon was still a Border keep, where the ground-floor had once been used for byres and stables, and the inhabitants had dwelt in the upper stories. The girl moved ahead of them. ‘Will you be pleased to follow me, sirs? My uncle awaits you above.’
They found themselves in a huge chamber which filled the width of the tower, and, but for a passage and a further staircase, its length. A dozen candles, which seemed to have been lit in haste, showed that it was raftered
