Lochinvar now transferred his attention to the third. He wore a small round cap on the top of his head, and his narrow and meagre forehead ran back shining and polished to the nape of his neck. His lack-lustre eyes were set curiously at different angles in his head. He had thin lips, which parted nervously over black, gaping teeth, and his nose was broken as if with a blow of a hammer.
"And is this gentleman also of Monsieur Haxo's gallant company, and in the suite of his Excellency my Lord of Barra?"
Haxo nodded his head with some appreciation of Wat's penetration.
"He is, indeed," he said; "he is my chief slaughterman, and a prince at his business."
"He is called 'The Killer,'" interjected the Calf, smacking his lips with unction. "It is a good name for him."
Wat Gordon urged his horse onward with great and undisguised disgust. To be sent on a dangerous mission with three such arrant rascals told him the value that his employers set upon his life. And if he had chanced at that moment to turn him about in his saddle, the evil smile of triumph which passed simultaneously over the faces of his companions might have told him still more.
The small cavalcade of four went clattering on through the dusky coolness of night, across many small wooden bridges and over multitudinous canals. It passed through villages, in which the inhabitants were already snoring behind their green blinds the unanimous antiphonal bass of the rustic just—though, as yet, it was little past nine of the clock on the great kirk tower of Amersfort, and in the city streets and in the camp every one was at the height of merriment and enjoyment.
Wafts of balmy country scents blew across the by-ways along which they went; and through the limpid gray coolness where the young leaves of the sparse hedgerow trees brushed his face, Wat could see that he was passing countless squares of parti-colored bloom. Miles of hyacinth, crocus, and narcissus gardens stretched away on either hand beyond the low, carefully cut Dutch hedges. Haxo the Bull rode first, showing them the way to the inn of Brederode, silently, save that every now and then he would cry a word over his shoulder, either to one of his ill-favored retinue or to an unseen watcher at some lonely cross-road.
Wat followed sullenly and fiercely, without caring much about the direction in which he was being taken. His mind, however, was preternaturally busy, going carefully over all the points of his interview with Kate, and very soon from the heights of justified indignation he fell to accusing himself of rude stupidity.
"I fear she will never look kindly on me again," he said, aloud. "This time I have certainly offended her forever."