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Rh the moors, all barren and profitless though they were, were his, and were rarely trodden by any step except his own.

"Ah! your Grace? Good day. How does the Border come to be honoured by a visit from you?"

"Lost my way!" responded his Grace of Glencairne, an inveterate sportsman and a hearty, florid, stalwart man of sixty, clad in a Scotch plaid suit, and looking like a well-to-do North-country farmer. "We're staying with Fitzallayne, and came out after the black game; lost all the rest somehow, and know no more where we are than if we were at the North Pole. You're a godsend. Let me introduce my friends to you; Sir Fulke Erceldoune—Lord Polemore—Mr. Victor Vane."

The beggared gentleman raised his bonnet to the Duke's friends with much such frank soldier-like courtesy as that with which the Border lords, whose blood was in his veins, received Chatelherault and Hamilton in the wild free days of old.

"Shot an eagle, Erceldoune? By George! what a bird," cried the Duke, gazing down amazed and admiring on the murdered monarch.

"I envy you, indeed!" said his companion whom he had named as Victor Vane. "I have shot most things—men, and other birds of prey—but I never