The band thought no worse of Stair for trying to throw dust in their eyes, but an Isle of Man shipper in possession of two spirited Castle Raincy horses was too much for them. They laughed as they rode and wondered how the heir of Raincy would explain matters to the Earl if the business culminated in a tussle.
But Louis had come out all safe, and though he openly flouted the Free Trade with the young men of his own rank, there was no part of his past, except only his talks with Patsy in the hollow of the old beech bole, which returned to him with such a flavour of fresh, glad youth as the "run" in which he had taken part.
So now that he was again to do something which would lead him out on the hills of heather in the misty shining of the moon or under the plush-spangled glitter of the midnight stars, he went off in high spirits to take his groom into his confidence and have the horses ready.
Obscurely, however, he felt that he was about to take part in a struggle for Patsy. It was to be a fight, not so much against danger from unscrupulous dandies like the Duke of Lyonesse and his acolyte, my Lord of Wargrove, as between Stair and himself. Louis de Raincy himself was "of as good blood as the King, only not so rich," as say the Spaniards. But this restless, stern-visaged Stair Garland, with his curious Viking fixity of gaze, what was his position towards Patsy? Was it all only friendship for the confidante of his sister? Louis Raincy's own hopes and purposes were of the vaguest. He did not even know whether he himself loved Patsy, but he was quite clear on the chapter of nobody else having her if he could help it.
CHAPTER IX
HIS LIFE IN HIS HAND
Louis Raincy rode right up to the door of Ladykirk and asked to see Miss Aline, with whom he had always been a great favourite. As a boy he had loved to play about her shrubberies. He remembered still the quaint smell of the damp pine-needles on the ground, the bitterness of laurel leaves which he broke across the centre and nibbled at, and above all, the long pleasant days of Miss Aline's jam-making, when he skirmished in and out and all about the kitchen and pantry, getting in everybody's way. Why, his very breath smelled sweet to himself after he had cleaned out brass pan after brass pan, with that worn spoon of horn warranted not to scratch, kept and supplied by Miss Aline for the purpose.
Now he was grown up. School and college had passed him by, and much to his own astonishment had left him in many ways as much a boy as ever. He had not been allowed to enter either of the fighting services, so he took what of adventure the country afforded—the rustic merry-making of the "Kirn" in the days of harvest home, the coastwise adventure of ships, and the midnight raid of the Free Traders with their clanking keg-irons and long defiles of pack horses crowning the fells and bending away towards the North star and safety.
Now Miss Aline greeted him cheerfully as he came in through the great doors of the courtyard which had been shut that morning for the first time since her father's funeral.