The minister had come, they said, and was waiting for me. I went in, and lo! to my wonder, who should he be but Maister Robert Bruce, the sequestrated minister of Edinburgh, with whom the King had at last wholly fallen out concerning the matter of the Gowrie riot. The Earl smiled at my wonderment. ’Art thou astonished,’ he said, ’thus to see our ancient friend in Carrick? Thinkest thou that thy marriage will not stand? Truth it will, for even King James will think twice, or he bids his bishop unfrock a man that bides with me in my defenced house of Cassillis.’ ’Sir Launcelot,’ said Maister Robert Bruce, bending to me with his ancient grace and most reverend dignity, ’this is the happiest hour with me since I quitted my high town upon the Long Ridge. It is true that I wander like a restless ghost seeking abode; but as yet the King hath not bent me—yea, though thrice I have met him in dispute and conference.’ Then went the Earl out to bring in my Nell, and I listened to the minister of Edinburgh speaking. Yet, on my life I could not fix my mind on a word he said, for there was a jangling as of many bells in mine ears, and all the pulses of my life beat together. Then knew I of a surety that none had power to touch my heart like Nell Kennedy, the lass that would not need to change her name. At last the door opened and she entered—leaning on the Earl’s arm she came. There was a rim of gold about her hair like a coronet. And John of Cassillis bent over to me, as he gave her into my hand. ’Take her,’ he said, ’I have set a coronet about her brows for to-day. She is in haste to be wed, or I might have put a real one there. And what had Sir Launcelot done then, poor thing?’ And I think the cold, tall Earl John was more than a little fond of our Nell, concerning which I often rally her now. So Nell and I were married. And as though he had known her and her teasing temper, Maister Robert Bruce paused long on the promise to ’obey’ when he came to put the questions to her, and also upon the words ’obedient wife.’ Wherefore I have ever held him to be a man gifted above most with the second sight. It was between the sweet hazel and the flowering May that we rode south—we two alone. For Robert Harburgh had led a company of men with flower-wreathed lances and of young maids on palfreys as far as the crossing of the roads which come from Culzean, where there met us a party with the loving cup.