'Is this true, Baronald?' asked Lord Lindores.
'Jest assuredly, so far as I am concerned,' replied Lewie.
'I must confess that the work looked remarkably like earnest, so far as your adversary was concerned,' remarked the Master of Dumbarton, with a look at Morganstjern which there was no mistaking; but the latter simply bowed, and saying:
'Gentlemen—your servant. I have the honour to bid you good evening.'
Then, accompanied by the Heer van Schrekhorn, he hastened away; leaving Baronald to explain the matter as he chose to his two brother-officers, who had some difficulty in making him really aware of the deadly risk he had run.
'He is gone like a man who has lost an hour and runs as if to overtake it,' said Lord Lindores. 'Now how came you, Lewie Baronald, to be fencing, even in jest, with rufflers such as these?'
Baronald could not explain that one of them was the cousin of Dolores.
'At the Kanongietery we have just parted with Van Otterbeck, the Minister of State. It is as well he did not accompany us and see that piece of folly, Baronald; it might have gone hard with you, as the Brigade is not greatly in favour just now,' said the Master of Dumbarton, who was James Douglas, grandson of the loyal and gallant Earl of that title, who was Colonel of the Royal Scots, and followed James VII. into exile.
He was tall, had a straight nose, the bold dark eyes of the Douglas race, and sunny brown hair tied behind with a black ribbon and rosette.
'True,' added Lord Lindores; 'and I begin to think the Brigade has had enough and to spare of Holland during these two hundred years past, fighting to defend lazy boors and greedy merchants, in a land of frowsy fogs and muddy canals; as Butler has it in "Hudibras:"