THE GRAPHIC, MARCH 25, 1905

" It was my husband who stood before me, with such an expression on his face as I had never seen there before."

MAY MARGARET

Being the Life Story of her whom four centuries have called The Fair Maid of Galloway." " The memory of her beauty lives." By S. R. CROCKETT. Illustrated by SEYMOUR LUCAS, R.A., and SYDNEY S. LUCAS

CHAPTER XXI (continued)

It was Malise who first put into my heart the fear which ever after sat heavily upon me.

" Little lady," the armourer of Thrieve began one day as he stood examining the bolts of the great door of Thrieve, have you never given to your husband that advice of the wise king of auld time, the which Laurence read me out of his learned books in the Latin tongue-or the Greek, I mind not which."

" And what might that be, Malise

To switch aff the heads o' the mucklest poppies !" he answered gravely, "an' that richt early. For if he winna, of a surety there shall fall a head so high that it touches the stars !"

" You mean my Lord the Earl William's," I answered. " Fear not for him, Malise. He holds them all in the hollow of his hand

That may be sae," persisted the smith, " I doot it not. But, mind ye, I have seen ere this a hundred yelpin' curs pu' doon a stag-o'-ten-tines !"

And the advice was good. For at this period William Douglas was like to none in all the land, and when he went forth the Crichtons were as nothing before him, hiding away in holes and corners. Even Livingston the Tutor had made friends with him, or at least seemed to do so. The worst of the ancient abuses were stubbed down, digged up, or rooted out of the land. And all was done without cruelty or the least hardship to any, save only to those who did evil to their neighbours or to the poor at their gates. On such William Douglas had no pity.

Yet for all, so simple was he, he never guessed that when the king delivered to him all authority, and, pretending to make much of him, sent him off on great embassies to London, to Paris, to Rome itself, it was always that he himself might escape from control and return to his favourites as a dog to his vomit. But, in spite of king and favourites, William Douglas waxed ever greater and greater in the land-for a time.

Then came a cooling in the ardour of the king's good- will. But of this, also, William took no heed, continuing to make treaties with England and France for the country's advantage in trade and well-being. Also he banded the more sober parts of the North into one league with himself, so that even the barbarous and pagan Isles (called of Skye and the Long Island) were made to obey and pay dues as regularly as the Lowdens and Fife. It was well said afterwards that the land made a greater advancement during these short years of William Douglas's vice-regality than it had done since the Battle of the Standard.

[Copyright, 1905, by S. R. CROCKETT, in the United States of America.]

But much of this came to us in our island-prison only in over- words and snatches. Save that which concerned itself, little gossip reached Thrieve. Packmen and carriers from Lanerick and Dum- fries brought us most of our news. On important occasions a messenger for Sholto would come in with his beast all of a lather, or if it were night or winter, in a perfect breathing mist of steamy

vapour.

One night in particular I remember. It was in the deep middle of winter-that is to say, in February. For mostly winter begins in Scotland with the inbringing of the Yule log. Sholto was at Douglas Castle on some business of the Earl's. Andro the Penman was in command at Thrieve, and, with his stick and hard words, scarce managed to secure that discipline which Sholto enforced with the mere glint of an eye or the indrawing of a resolute lip. But then Sholto was a knight and in full authority, and Andro the Penman only one of the Guard-as it were, first among his peers.

It was a night of snow. The afternoon had fallen upon the face of the country greenish-grey and dour, with a bitter nip in the air. Andro the Penman sniffed and said, Snow !" Maud, with her nose to the wind, looked out on the terrace towards the north, in turn shook her head and said, " Snow ! And I pray that that goodman of mine may be somewhere snug in hold to-night." Then she went and saw to it that the bairns' window-shutters were properly fastened inside the shot bars which kept them from falling out ten times a day.

Then, softly at first, small dampish snow began to tall drizzlingly, drifting on the ledges, forming into little piles behind the gargoyles, and making long lines with waving crests in the roof gutters. The men on guard on the towers and about the fortifications had an ill time of it. The storm seemed to take them everyway at once.

God help all such as are abroad to-night !" I said, as I drew my furs close about me. For even in the great hall, with fires blazing at either end, piled high with beech-logs and crackling