The sentinel had by this time got on his feet and was staring at the company like one dazed. “Where’s your pike?” demanded Traquair. “On the stanes ootside, ma lord.” “Very well, go out and lift it, and see that you hold a better grip of it when the next man comes along. Attend to Armstrong’s horse, and keep an eye up and down the road.” “I’ll look after my own beast, Traquair.” “No need for that, Will. We have matters of importance to discuss, and Angus here will feed the horse as well as you can do it.” “I’ll eat and drink whatever’s set before me, and never ask who is the cook, but I trust no man to wait on my horse. You bide by your sentry march, Angus, and I’ll see to the beast.” With this Armstrong strode out of the house, the ill-used sentinel following him. As the door closed, the interrupted hum of conversation rose again. Who the interloper might be was the burden of the inquiry. “Armstrong’s the very man for our purpose,” said Traquair. “If any one can get through Old Noll’s armies by craft or by force, it is Will. I had no idea he was near by, or I would never have wasted thought on any other. I have known him for years, and there’s none to match him, Hielan’ or Lowlan’. We need seek nae farrar if Christie’s Wull is wullin’.” “I have never before heard of him,” said the Reverend Alexander Henderson, of Edinburgh. “What has he done?” “What has he not done?” asked the Earl. “The Border rings with his fame, as it has rung with the fame of his ancestors these several centuries past.” “Oh, the Border!” cried the townsman, with the contempt of his class for the supposedly ignorant condition of that wild hilly belt which girded the waist of the land. “We all know what brings a man renown on the Border. The chief requisites are a heavy sword and a thick skull. That the proposed excursion may require a ready blade at times, I admit, but a man who depends on that will not blunder through. There are too many of his kind opposed to him in Cromwell’s army. It is not a wilderness like the Border that lies between here and Oxford, but a civilized country with cities, and men of brains in them. To win through and back requires skill and diplomacy, alertness of resource, as well as the qualities of riding hard and striking swift.” “William Armstrong has all these qualities, and many more,” replied Traquair. “The sample of his conduct just presented to us savors more of violence than of tact,” objected Henderson. “He comes breenging in on a private conference of his betters, carrying their sentinel on his head like a shambled sheep, and flings him in a corner. This proves him a strong man, but far from a wise one, because, for all he knew, he might have been walking into an ambuscade that would have cost him his life or liberty. It was pure luck and not foreknowledge that caused him to find a friend at our board.”