'He knows that I have pledged my honour for him,' said James. Bedford's thin lips moved at the corners. 'Nay,' said James, not angrily, 'the youth hath in some measure disappointed me. The evil in him shot forth faster than the good under this camp life; but methinks there is in him a certain rare quality of soul that I loved him for at the first, and though it hath lain asleep all this time, yet what he hath now seen seemed to me about to work the change in him.' 'It may be so,' said Bedford; 'and yet I would I had not consented to his going where that woman of Hainault might work on him to fret the Lady Esclairmonde.' James started somewhat as he remembered overruling this objection of Malcolm's own making. 'She cannot have the insolence,' he said. At that moment a hasty step approached; the door was opened with scant ceremony, and Ralf Percy, covered from head to foot with blood, hurried in breathless and panting. 'My lord Duke, your license! Here is Malcolm Stewart set upon in the forest by robbers and stabbed!' 'Slain? Dead?' cried both princes, springing up in horror. 'Alive still--in the chapel--asking for you, my lord,' said Percy. 'He bade us lay him there at the King's feet; and as it was the readiest way to a priest, we did his bidding.' 'My poor Malcolm!' sighed James; and he and Bedford hastened to obey the summons. There was time on the way for Ralf Percy to give them the particulars. 'We had gone forth--Trenton, Kitson, altogether some half-dozen of us--for a mouthful of air in the forest after our guard all day in the chapel, when about a mile from the Castle we heard a scuffle, and clashing of arms. So breaking through the thicket, we saw a score of fellows on horseback fully armed, and in the midst poor Glenuskie dragged to the ground and struggling hard with two of them. We drew our swords, hallooed, and leapt out; and the knaves never stayed to see how many of us there were, but made off like the dastards they were, but not till one had dealt poor Stewart this parting stroke. He hath been bleeding like a sheep all the way home, and hath scarce spoken but a thanksgiving for our having come in time, as he called it, and to ask for Dr. Bennet and the Duke.'