"I suppose that so much providing is for your four sons?" said Sholto.
The cripple laughed again his feeble, fleering laugh.
"I have no sons, honest sir," he said; "it was but a weakling's policy to tell you so, lest there should have been evil in your hearts. But I have a wife and that is enough. You may have heard of her. She is called La Meffraye."
As he spoke his face took on an access of white terror, even as it had done when he looked out of the window.
"La Meffraye is she well named," he repeated the appellation with a harsh croak as of a night-hawk screaming. "God forfend that she should come home to-night and find you here!"
"Why, good sir," smiled James Douglas, "if that be the manner in which you speak of your housewife, faith, I am right glad to have remained a bachelor."
Cæsar the cripple looked about him and lowered his voice.
"Hush!" he quavered, breathing hard so that his words whistled between his toothless gums, "you do not know my wife. I tell you, she is the familiar of the marshal himself."
"Then," cried James Douglas, slapping his thigh, "she is young and pretty, of a surety. I know what these soldiers are familiar with. I would that she would come home and partake with us now."
"Nay," said the old man, without taking offence, "you mistake, kind sir, I meant familiar in witchcraft, in devilry—not (as it were) in levity and cozenage."