"She said, in the French language, 'You shall not kill him.

You shall not! He trusted me and he shall not die.'" Meanwhile Sholto, knowing that there was no time to lose, had been drawing in the cord, which presently thickened into a rope stout enough to support the weight of a light and active youth such as any of the three young men imprisoned in David's Tower.
But the sound of the woman's tears had thrown the Earl into an excitement so extreme that he hammered on the great bolt-studded door with his bare clenched hands, and cried aloud to the Chancellor and Livingston, commanding them to open to him.

His first calmness seemed completely broken up.
Meanwhile Sholto, his whole soul bent on the cord which gave the unseen Douglases a chance of saving the lives of their masters, had drawn thirty yards of stout rope into the room.

He fixed it by a double knot, first to a ring which was let into the wall, and afterwards to the massive handle of the door itself.
"Now, my lord," he whispered, as he finished, "be pleased to go first.

Our lads are beneath, and in the shaking of a cow's tail we shall be safe in the midst of them." The Earl held up his hand with the quick imperative motion he used to command silence.