Maxwell was too old a soldier not to be on the alert in such a situation: it was with a feeling more of annoyance than surprise that he heard the tramp of horses advancing at a rapid pace over the sounder sward he had left behind him; and whilst he shortened his reins and hitched his sword-belt to the front, it was but with a dogged consciousness that, though he meant to fight to the last, he was sure to get the worst of it, outnumbered, and on a tired horse. He had, however, the caution to halt on the far side of some broken and boggy ground; so that the new comers, whom he now made out to be but two, must attack him at a disadvantage, if they intended violence; and he thought how he could best separate them, that they might not both set on him at once. The horsemen, however, halted immediately they caught sight of him, and the foremost called out in a loud, frank voice, undoubtedly English in its tone-- ‘Is it friend or foe? A man must be one or other in the Debatable Land!’ ‘Friend!’ answered Maxwell confidently, adding, as an earnest of his sincerity, ‘Keep near the big stone, or you’ll go in up to your girths!’ Following his advice, the horseman and his attendant, who appeared nothing more than a simple domestic, emerged upon sound ground. The former was admirably mounted, and although his dress denoted the gentleman rather than the soldier, he sat his horse with the ease of a skilful cavalier. Maxwell made out also in the moonlight that he was perfectly armed, wearing both pistols and rapier, and carried a small valise, with somewhat ostentatious care, on the saddle in front of him. ‘Friend!’ he repeated, bowing ceremoniously, as he brought his horse alongside Maxwell’s, ‘foes are more plentiful in this district on a moonlight night. We may meet some gentlemen hereabouts who would give us anything but a “Highland welcome.” As we are going in the same direction, by your good leave we will travel together. Union is strength; although,’ he added, glancing at the other’s tired horse, ‘haste is not speed.’ His manner was courtly, or rather courtier-like, in the extreme, and Maxwell saw at a glance he had to do with one of the porcelain vessels of the earth; yet there was a conventional tone of indifference, a something of covert sarcasm, and implied superiority in his voice, that jarred upon the franker nature of the soldier. They rode on, however, amicably together--the attendant, a burly Southron, apparently by no means easy either in mind or body, keeping close behind his master. The latter was bound, he said, for Hermitage, which he hoped to reach before midnight, and he seemed to treat his new companion with a shade more deference when he learned that Maxwell was a kinsman of the redoubted Earl of Bothwell.