Dick seemed sadly disturbed. He fidgeted with his bridle, he loosened his sword in its sheath, he looked up and down and on all sides of him in obvious vexation. Once when a jackman rode nearer Maxwell than was convenient, he bade the man keep his distance with a hearty curse. He seemed hurried, and yet anxious to put off time, and talked at random as one does who has some engrossing subject of no pleasant nature to occupy his thoughts. ‘Ye wad be better at Holyrood, Maister Maxwell,’ said he, still harping on the old subject. ‘An’ ye were at the palace yesterday, nae doot, wi’ the Queen an’ her leddies, an’ who but you? I wish ye were there at this moment, Maister Maxwell, an’ that’s the dooms truth o’ it!’ ‘Orders must be obeyed, Dick,’ answered the other, vainly trying to induce the whole cavalcade to increase their pace, which had now dwindled down to a very funeral walk. ‘That reminds me, I have a message for you from one of the Queen’s maids-of-honour.’ All the blood in the borderer’s great body seemed to rush into as much of his face as was visible beneath his morion, then the colour faded visibly, and for the first time in his life ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ turned as white as a sheet. ‘It wad no be from Mistress Seton!’ said he, almost unconsciously, and with the true Scottish negative that affirms so much. ‘Man! I wad like fine to hear it,’ and he bent over his horse’s neck and looked Walter in the face with something of the wistful eager expression that the Newfoundland dog, to whom he has already been compared, assumes when his master is going to throw a stick for him to retrieve out of the water. In the animal goes! A plumper off the pier, be it never so high, and the waves breaking never so angrily below, and you may be sure that in his noble instinct of fidelity he would drown ten times over before he would let go. Walter freed his rein from the other’s grasp, and struck into a trot. ‘It was but to hope you had not forgotten all she taught you, Dick, good manners and such like. I may tell her when I see her again that you are such a courteous squire now, you guide the bridle-rein of a mounted man-at-arms as carefully as a lady’s palfrey. Tush, man! we are wasting time; let us strike into the right path and get on. I tell thee mine errand admits of no delay!’ He spoke impatiently, but yet in perfect good-humour, and looking on his companion’s face, was startled at the expression of intense pain that was apparent in its features. ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ looked like a man who had been shot through the body, and was endeavouring to hide his internal agony under an appearance of outward composure.