Kings of Carrick

PREPARING FOR THE ENCOUNTER. 19
have done little but eat and drink and sleep, and curse the
Earl of Cassillis ; but we are no nearer the end with it all, so
far as I see, nor are we likely to be until we throw off this
laziness and begin business again."
" That is so," assented Mure of Cloncaird, " we are quite
going to rust idling our time away here and doing nothing,
while Cassillis, for all that we know, is getting ready for
action, and moving heaven and earth besides, to prejudice the
Privy Council against us. If we don't bestir ourselves, and
that speedily, every mother's son of us will be put to th«
horn before we know where we are."
" We are a great deal more likely to be put to the horn,"
replied Auchendrane, " for doing too much, than we are for
doing too little. Still, the Earl has the ear of the Chancellor ;
there is no denying that."
" I should imagine he has," assented the Master of Stair,
drily, " for he is married to the last Chancellor's widow — old
enough to be his grandmother."
;< Old enough to be his mother, anyway," said Bargany,
" but whether he has the ear of the Chancellor, as Auchen-
drane says, or not, this is no life for me to be living. It is
the powerful who grow more powerful and are most regarded
in these times ; and unless we show that we are a force in
Carrick that has to be reckoned with, who knows whether
Cassillis may not some fine day get all our lands forfeited to
the Crown and then to himself, because, as he puts it, we are
troublous and tumultuous ?"
" What a pity your brother Thomas missed his chance at
the Earl the other day, Bargany ! " observed Cloncaird in a
regretful tone.
" The devil is good to his own," was the reply. " Yet, I
don't know how they missed him. Sometimes I begin to
think there is treachery in the air, though, if there were,"
here Bargany paused for a moment, and completed the sen-
tence by bringing his hand down with a resonant blow on the