Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/256

Rh The dog seemed instinctively to know that in his liberator was the avenger of his mistress. He accepted the lead, and followed passively.

Repeated peril and dangerous emergencies, often met and vanquished by himself alone, had given Erceldoune the energetic vigilance, the knowledge and the patience of a soldier; his own nature was rash, impulsive, and hotly impetuous, but the habit of long and arduous service had taught him the value of coolness and of self-restraint. His passions and his fiery chivalry of temper could have led him now to any madness, could have led him to seek out Francis in his own palace, and strike him down before all his nobles and all his guards, as her tyrant and her abductor. He had the blood in him of Border chiefs who had fought for Mary Stuart, and Scottish soldiers who had served with Gordon's archers, of haughty Castilians who had died for a point of honour, and steel-clad Spaniards who had conquered with the Great Captain; and a vein of the old dauntless, reckless, fearless, romantic knight-errantry of a dead day was in him, little as he had known it. His rival had not erred when he said that the "Border Eagle" should have lived in the Crusades. But not the less did he know now that discretion and