The tents which had been dotted thickly athwart the castle island were already mostly struck, and the ground was littered with miscellaneous debris, soon to be carried off in trail carts with square wooden bodies set on boughs of trees, and flung into the river, by the Earl's varlets and stablemen.
The multitudinous liegemen of the Douglas were by this time streaming homewards along every mountain pass.

Over the heather and through the abounding morasses horse and foot took their way, no longer marching in military order, as when they came, but each lance taking the route which appeared the shortest to himself.

North, east, and west spear-heads glinted and armour flashed against the brown of the heather and the green of the little vales, wherein the horses bent their heads to pull at the meadow hay as their riders sought the nearest way back again to their peel-towers and forty-shilling lands.
It was at the great gate of Thrieve that the Earl called aloud for Sholto.

He had been speaking to his cousin William, a strong, silent man, whose repute was highest for good counsel among all the branches of the house of Douglas.
Sholto came forward from the head of his archer guard with a haste which betrayed his anxiety lest in some manner he had exceeded his duty.

The Earl bade him kneel down.