But all the while Marjorie stood looking calmly down at James Mure. He recovered little by little from the stunning knock, and presently made as if he would sit up.
'Tie his hands,' said Marjorie Kennedy. And then seeing that we hesitated—'nay, give me the halter,' she said, 'I will do it myself.' And there on the open moor, with the bridle of his own beast, I declare she did the binding featly and well.
'Now, listen, James Mure,' she said, raising her voice, 'ye have steeped your hands in my father's blood. Ye have shed yet more blood to cover that crime, even the blood of an innocent young child. With these hands that are tied, you did these things. I am your wife. I will never leave you nor forsake you till you die. I will see that you have fair and honourable trial; but be assured that I shall testify against you truly as to that which I know and have seen.
She turned to us with her old easy way of command, imperiously gracious, but sharper a little than her ordinary. 'Mount him on that horse,' she said, like a queen who issues commands to her court.
And this was she who had walked gladsomely with me in the garden at Culzean, and who in smiling maidenly condescension had given a love-sick boy her favour to wear. What agony of hell had passed over her spirit thus to turn the sweet maiden to a woman of stone?
'Whither shall we take him?' said I, for it seemed to me not at all expedient to delay longer than we could help in that disturbed and fatal part of the country.
'To the Earl, on his way to the King!' replied Marjorie Kennedy.
'If ye bide still half-an-hour where ye are, ye will see the Earl come hither,' said Robert Harburgh. 'He rides to the south to hold his yearly Court of Bailiary on the borders of Carrick.'
For since the great defeat of the Bargany faction, and the death of the young chief at the gate of Maybole upon that memorable day of snow, my Lord Cassillis had gained more and more in power, so that none now was able to make any head openly against him. The death of Sir Thomas, my good master, had also thrown all that additional weight of authority upon his shoulders. Indeed Earl John bode fair to be what his father had been before him—the King of Carrick.
His titular jurisdiction had always included the southern parts of the district. But it was only of late that he had made himself so strong as to be able to enforce his authority there.