"Certainly," replied our old acquaintance, with perfect confidence; "I am James Achanna, a gentleman of the Lord Douglas, a name at which men prick their ears in Nithsdale, whatever they may do in foggy Flanders."
"And I," said the other, "am the Lord Rosse."
"Rosse!" reiterated Gray; "pardon me, sir, but, under favour, we have no such lord in Scotland."
"Not when I am out of it," said he, laughing.
"I know not the title," added Gray, coldly.
"Indeed! one seems to be soon forgotten then. Shall I state to you more fully that I am Robert Stewart, duke of Albany and earl of Rosse."
"The son of Duke Murdoch!" exclaimed Gray, starting from his seat with mingled surprise and respect.
"Yes; son of that Duke Murdoch, who, with his second son, and Duncan, earl of Lennox, was foully butchered at the Lady's Rock, before the castle gates of Stirling. Vengeance has a long and bitter memory! and by that extrajudicial murder, for such I will maintain it to be in the face of Europe, I have been since boyhood an exile, a wanderer, and now, when little more than thirty years of age, my hair is greyer than my poor old father's was, when his venerable head rolled in the sand beneath the doomster's axe."
Gray bowed low, for respect to the royal blood was strongly graven then in the hearts of the Scots, in none more than his, and Albany, though exiled and outlawed, in consequence of the malpractices of his father (who had been regent during the detention of James I. in England), was the cousin of King James II.
"And you, sir?" asked Albany, loftily.