A considerable period that passed in quietness, seemed to indicate that the anger of the vanquished baron had escaped by the valves appointed by nature for freeing the liver of its redundant bile. Meanwhile, Innerkepple's universal love of mankind increased, as his friendship for the juice of the grape grew stronger and stronger, and his potations waxed deeper and deeper; so that he was represented, all over the Borders, as being the most jovial baron of his time. The fame of Kate also went abroad like fire-flaughts; but no one knew what to make of her--whether to set her down as a beautiful virago, or as a merry imp of sportive devilry, who fought her father's enemy with the same good-will she felt towards the lovers whom she delighted with her beauty and gaiety, and tormented by her cruel waggeries and wiles. This apparent quietness, and the consequent freedom from all danger, induced the old baron to comply with a request made to him by King James, to lend him forty of his followers, to aid in suppressing some disturbances caused by a number of outlawed reivers at that time ravaging the Borders. Katherine gave her consent to the measure; but she wisely exacted the condition that the men should not be removed to a greater distance from the castle than ten miles. When James' emissary asked her why she adjected this condition to her father's agreement, she answered, with that waggish mystery in which she often loved to indulge, that she had such a universal love for his--the emissary's--sex, that she could not suffer the idea of her gallant men being further removed from her than the distance on which she had condescended. A question for explanation only produced another wicked _quodlibet_; so that the royal messenger was obliged to be contented with a reason that sounded in his ears very like a contempt of royal authority--a circumstance for which she cared no more than she did for the mute expression of admiration of her beauty, that her quick eye detected on the face of the deputy.