"I urged Howard to throw her overboard," said Borthwick, lowering his voice, while that snaky gleam which his eyes often wore passed over them.
"And what said Howard then?" asked Gray, impatiently.
"The Saxon pockpudding! he smote me on the mouth with his steel glove, and styled your knighthoods a pack of 'Scottish hounds,'" replied Borthwick, whose sinister brow grew dark with ferocity; "and he threatened to make a martyr of me, like St. Clement."
"Would to thy master the devil that he had done so," grumbled the drunken Shaw; thinking of his share in that dark deed in Beaton's mill.
Gray muttered an impatient and unmeaning malediction.
"What said ye then?" asked Keir, with a cold smile, as he played with his dagger.
"I said little, but I thought much."
"What thought ye?" asked Gray, fiercely.
"Merely that this Englishman was not yet on his own side of the border," said Borthwick with a deep smile, as he took the last drain of his wine-pot.
"Angus still acts the bearward to this beardless princeling Rothesay," said Gray; "and so is occupied by matters of his own; but the tide of events on which we have ridden so bravely, seems setting in against us now; all we can do is to watch, and watch well; let us be assured in the first place, of what messengers come from the fleet, and whether they say aught of Margaret Drummond; for if she once gain Rothesay's ear, our cause is ruined and for ever lost!"