Hot and cloudless, the rays of the glorious summer sun poured over the giant summit of the Cairntable, and played along the pastoral glens below, to be reflected by the gleam of arms and the glitter of armour descending from those heights which overlook the towers of the Douglases—the "Castle Dangerous" of chivalry and romance.
The lairds and warders of the various towers which overhung the valley, were all on the alert, and had barred their gates, drawn up their bridges, and prepared their armour, with not the less care, because they could perceive the royal standard with the red lion waving above the copsewood below.
With their swords sheathed and visors up, Roland Vipont and Louis Leslie rode together at the head of their little column, which had passed a peaceful campaign of nearly three weeks in Lanarkshire, without being molested by any one; and, of course without hearing tidings of the Earl of Ashkirk, for whom, as in duty bound, they made the most minute inquiries—Roland being the more rigid in his search, because he believed him to be in safe concealment at Edinburgh. The horses of the artillery looked sleek and well fed; and the cannoniers, with Leslie's hundred men of the guard, had all their harness and arquebuses as bright as on that day when they marched from Holyrood.
"'S life! but we spend our time wearily! Will nobody fight with us?" said Roland, with a yawn, as they wound down the valley, by the banks of the Douglas. "St. Mary! I feel a violent inclination to maul some of those towers, that from every rock and hill-top look down so saucily on our line of march."
"What?—the houses of thy Douglas friends?"
"Assuredly."
"And why?"
"Just to keep us in practice and because they are held by Hamiltons."
"Lucky it is, for us, that they are so. Long before this, had the Douglases possessed the same power in Lanarkshire that they did ten years ago, we had been eaten up."
"True, in 1527, a hundred men, with two pieces of cannon, if they had once ventured into the middle ward on such an errand as ours, had never come out of it again."