By this system, acquired amid the dark intrigues of a turbulent court, rather than in the camp, Sir Patrick Gray was a general favourite, especially of the young king, who was then, as before-mentioned, in his eleventh year, and whose preceptor he became, in all military exercises and the sports of the field. Gray had natural tact, a knowledge of the then limited world, and the great art of occasionally conquering himself.
Murielle was the stake he played for, and he never lost sight of her.
The moon had waned, and not a star was visible in the dark November sky, as he and MacLellan proceeded through the gloomy city towards the fortress.
"A moonless night, but a fine one," said Gray, wrapping his velvet cloak about him.
"For shooting bats or owls," added MacLellan, as he stumbled over the rough and unpaved street. "Ay, and a night to try men's mettle if there be witches abroad."
"Soho!" said Gray, gaily; "we have left the most perilous witches behind us, with old Abbot John, of Tongland; but assuredly one is safer in a gaberlunzie's canvas gaberdine than a velvet pourpoint to-night, when so many Douglas troopers and Annandale thieves in Johnstone grey are abroad; and the sky is so dark that the devil, were he here, could not see his own tail behind him."
Unmolested, however, they reached the castle, where the portcullis was down and all the gates secured; and where the garrison, which was almost entirely composed of the lord chancellor's vassals, kept watch and ward as warily as if a foreign army, and not the Douglases, had been in the sleeping city below.
As they entered a man passed out: he was muffled in a cloak, with an iron salade on his head—a species of helmet, which effectually concealed the face, but had a horizontal slit for the eyes.
Recognizing the voice of Gray, he rubbed his thin hands together, and smiled maliciously; for this nocturnal rambler was James Achanna, who had just been depositing the four coffins in the vault of David's Tower, and who seemed still to see before him, as the unconscious lover passed gaily into the fortress, a gilt plate inscribed: "Murielle Douglas, qui obit 23 Novembris, A.D. 1440."