While he was in the ordinance room one morning he was startled by its tubby little keeper coming suddenly upon him just after he had hidden a rather more generous length of rope than usual beneath his shoulder-cape. Sir Richard made out to be examining one of the brass cannons. "That are a bonnie piece, worshipful knight," said the keeper proudly. "A right bonnie piece, Sir Richard. She'll a-come you through a two-foot wall, sir, as smooth as a tup-ny whistle-pipe." Here he paused, scratching his bullet head, and taking up the end of the coil of rope from which Sir Richard had cut the piece inside his cape. "'Tis a muckle strange thing how the good hemp do vanish," he pursued in a puzzled way, "a muckle strange thing. Once 'a be a-thinkin' as what every rogue in the castle were a-stealin' o' rope's-ends to choken their knavish throats. But every rag-tailed son of 'em do answer to the daily roll. Not one of 'em be a-missin'; not one, sir." "Mayhap you'll be in trouble for not keeping a closer watch," observed Sir Richard. "Here will be money enough to buy you a new coil the next time you get you into Bannockburn." It was on the morning that the young knight was carrying up the last splicing of rope but one that he missed Lady Anna from her accustomed place beside the youth's knee. Hastily knotting and securing the rope around a rung of the iron ladder he hurried back along the passageway. Pausing beside the youth's room he again looked through the window. The boy was still alone, and pacing back and forth across the room in that which seemed to be a paroxysm of grief and anger, clenching his blue-veined hands, throwing pillows madly about the floor, and soliloquizing with a bitter and impassioned vehemence. Experiencing an indescribable sort of fascination, Sir Richard stopped to listen. CHAPTER XVI OF THE RETURN OF LORD DOUGLAS, AND THE COUNCIL OF JACKDAWS "Ah! Woe is me--woe, woe is me!" the youth was crying bitterly. "To think that I must forget my home, my generous father, my brothers, and my dear, kind sister. That I must deny even my good and gentle mother who bore me into the world and suckled me at her bosom! And here am I giving her sorrow of my death when I am living! Woe--woe! Better--far, far better that my final act should be the rescuing of one truth out of this tissue of black and damning lies! Aye--" he gasped, glaring with eyes wide distended around the room--"an the means were but at hand, I could do it even now! But how I tremble when I but think of it.... My hand.... See how it doth shake--palsied with horror of the grisly phantom! Even now," he whispered hoarsely, "I can see them bringing in the winding sheet. Nay--nay, I dare not! Fear, that doth withhold my craven arm, doth set his grinning skull at every exit and bid me stay." Then, throwing himself at full length upon the floor, the youth resigned himself to a fit of tempestuous weeping.