"Enter, lord earl, the king's grace and the regent await you in the great hall."
After each declining to precede the other, the wily chancellor, while making a sign previously agreed upon and understood by James Achanna and Romanno of that ilk, constable of the garrison, gave a hand to each of the brothers, and led them within the gate.
There was an immediate rush among their rough and tumultuary followers to press in after them, but the king's guard and the chancellor's vassals, with levelled pikes, bore back alike the excited multitude of citizens and the wild Scots of Galloway, bare-kneed and bare-armed, with their habergeons of jangling iron rings, and the strong barrier-gate was closed with haste and difficulty. Lord Ormond, Sir Malcolm Fleming, Sir Alan Lauder, and a few others, in virtue of their rank, being alone permitted to enter.
This coup was the more easily effected, as at the moment of the earl's entrance Douglas of Pompherston, his purse-bearer, cried "largesse! largesse!" and to add to the incidental popularity of his lord, scattered several handfuls of silver coin among the people, who scrambled in pursuit of them, and rolled over each other in heaps, while the reckless young earl and his brother laughed and threw more, to increase the uproar and merriment.
Then the portcullis, a massive iron grille, was lowered slowly down in its stony grooves, and when its iron spikes reached the causeway, James Achanna, the double tool of Abercorn and the chancellor, exchanged with the latter one of those deep and rapid smiles by which courtly villains can read each other's hearts and convey a volume of subtle thoughts.
Unheeding, or unobservant of all these circumstances, the earl and his brother accompanied the chancellor into the fortress, and as they slowly proceeded up the steep steps and winding path, which led in a north-westerly direction, to the summit of the rock, Crichton expatiated on the joy this meeting occasioned him, as being the precursor of domestic peace, of good will and unity, between his master the king and the great house of Douglas; but while speaking he could perceive the haughty young peer exchanging secret smiles with his brother; so, nothing daunted, the chancellor continued to flatter, and secretly smiled in his turn.
"Great as the house of Douglas has been——"
"Is, my lord," interrupted the earl, haughtily.
"Pardon me," stammered Crichton, reddening with anger to find himself thus addressed by a boy; "I was about to say, that in ages past, its chief glory was ever in its obedience to the crown, from whence its greatness and its honours sprung."
"Well?" observed the boy-noble impatiently.