Then knew I how excellent a thing it is to have to do in peace or war with gentlemen. For to do them justice, the Craufords of Kerse were neither landloupers nor ambuscaders. *CHAPTER X* *SIR THOMAS OF THE TOP-KNOT* My guard of honour did not leave me till I was within sight of the towers of Cassillis, when David Crauford and his men parted from me with silent salute. Nor had the dyke-back hiding gentry so much as ventured to show their faces. So I rode down to Cassillis yett, a well-kenned place and famous in story. Down a smooth, green mead I rode to it. At the gate the porter, a surly rogue, bade me stand. ’Stand thou, hang thee, pock-faced varlet!’ I cried; ’haste thee and up with the gates, or thine ass’s ears shall answer for it, nailed incontinent to a post!’ Whereupon, seeing him wondering and still wavering, I drew off my glove and flashed the Earl’s broad signet ring at him. I declare he laid hold of the pulley like one demented. ’I trust, noble sir, that ye will not mention the matter of my hasty greeting to my lord,’ he said to me as I passed, for the rascal was shaking in every limb. ’Let it learn you to be better scraped as to the tongue for the time to come,’ I answered sharply, for I was none sorry once for all to read the villain a lesson. There is nothing better than a man who worthily and for his office’s sake magnifies his office, but there is nothing more scunnering than that a menial knave, in pride of place, should beard his betters. In the hall of Cassillis, while I waited for my lord, I met the old man of strange aspect, who had been with us upon the Red Moss. He was dressed in a long, lank robe like a soutane, and he carried a book with him, very filthy and tattered. In this he read, or pretended to read, by whiles, muttering and mumbling the words over to himself. Seeing me stand alone, he came over and began to speak to me about matters that I knew not of—something that concerned the Black Vault of Dunure, so I understood him to say. But his appearance as he talked caused me to laugh, though, being an old man, I did not let him see it. His head appeared as bald all about as is a hen’s egg. But on the very crown there was an oval place of a hand’s breadth or thereby, from which dropped a crest of yellow-white hair, very laughable and ludicrous. For as the old man talked the silly cockscomb on his crown waggled, and being toothless his jaw waggled also. So that the nut-cracker jaw underneath and the waggling plume aloft might well have made a cat laugh. ’I am Sir Thomas Tode,’ he mumbled, when I began to get a little familiar with his shambling speech—’ay me, Sir Thomas Tode’ (he pronounced the word as though it had been the name of the foul beast that squats on its belly), ’the famous Sir Thomas Tode am I. Ay, dear mother Mary—I mean Christian friends, but a feck of life it has been my lot to see.’