"Well, I know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers," she
said, "but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, I think
you will say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that I want
to kill, I think. Did ever you kill anyone?"

"That I have, as it chances. Two, no less, and me still a lad that
should be at the college," said I. "But yet, in the look-back, I take no
shame for it."

"But how did you feel, then--after it?" she asked.

"'Deed, I sat down and grat like a bairn," said I.

"I know that, too," she cried. "I feel where these tears should come
from. And at any rate, I would not wish to kill, only to be Catherine
Douglas that put her arm through the staples of the bolt, where it was
broken. That is my chief hero. Would you not love to die so--for your
king?" she asked.

"Troth," said I, "my affection for my king, God bless the puggy face of
him, is under more control; and I thought I saw death so near to me this
day already, that I am rather taken up with the notion of living."

"Right," she said, "the right mind of a man! Only you must learn arms; I
would not like to have a friend that cannot strike. But it will not have
been with the sword that you killed these two?"

"Indeed, no," said I, "but with a pair of pistols. And a fortunate thing
it was the men were so near-hand to me, for I am about as clever with