drink for the fiddlers. She did more. To please the French Ambassador and his suite, she and her maids put on men's clothes, and flashed golden hangers from their belts before the courtly circle. The dancing grew the looser as the lights flared to their end. Many a man and many a maid slept by the wall; but there was high revelry in the midst.

Very late, the tumble and revelling at its height, in came the King, with Lord Ruthven, Archie Douglas, and some more of his friends. He stared, brushed his hot eyes. "What a witches' Sabbath! Where's my- ? Where's the Queen? "Yonder, sir. Masked, and talking with my Lady Argyll-and

"God help us, I see." He pushed squarely through the crowd, and stood before her, not steadily.

"Good-morrow to your Majesty," he said. "The hour is late-or early, as you take it. But I am here--ready for bed." She held her head up, looking away from him, and spoke as if she were talking to her people.

"I'll not come," she said. going to cards. Come, ladies. sirs." Turning, she left him.

"I am

Come,

He looked after her owlishly, blinking as if he was about to cry. He caught Ruthven by the arm. “Oh, man,” he said, "oh, Ruthven, do you see that? Do you see whom she has there?"

"Hush, sir," says Ruthven. "Tis the same as yesterday, and all the yesterdays, and as many morrows as you choose to stomach. Come you to your bed. You cannot mend it this way."

The King still blinked and looked after his wife. He began to tremble. "Oh, man," he said, "when shall I do it?"

Ruthven, after a flashing look at him, ran after the Queen's party. She was a little in front, cloaked now and walking with her ladies. Ruthven caught up the Italian and said some words. The man stopped, and looked at him guardedly. Ruthven came closer, and put his hand on his shoulder, talking copiously. As he talked, and went on talking, his hand slipped gently down the Italian's back to his middle, opened itself wide, and stayed there open.

They parted with laughter on both sides, and a bow from David. Ruthven came back.

"You may do it when you please, sir," he said to the King.

CHAPTER IV.

MANY DOGS.

WHEN, on March 6th, the expected stroke fell upon my Lord Chancellor Morton, and he was required to hand over the seals of his high office to the Queen's messengers, he did so with a certain heavy dignity. As I imply, he had had time for preparation. He had not seen his sovereign for some weeks, knew that Maitland had not, knew also that his alliance (even his kinship) with the King had worked against him, and suspected, finally, that what that had not done for his prospects had been managed by the Italian. So he bowed his head to Erskine and Traquair when they waited upon him, and, pointing to the Great Seal on the table, said simply, "Let her Majesty take back what her Majesty gave. Gentlemen, good night." Truly, we may say that nothing in his life became him like the leaving it but that is the rule.

"I

"I take your meaning," he said. had thought of it myself. But, to say nothing of his place by her side, I doubt he wears a steel shirt."

Archie said shortly: "He does not. The King felt him last night as he sat at the cards. And Ruthven felt him well on Bothwell's marriage night."

"The King! He did that!"
"He did just that."

Morton gazed at him for a minute. "Why," he marvelled, "why, then he stands in wi' the rest? Archie, are ye very sure?"

Archie the wise snapped his fingers at

such elementary knowledge. "A month. gone, come Friday, he began to open to Ruthven about it."

The Earl rapped the table smartly with his fingers. "And I am the last to know it! I thank you, cousin, for your good conceit of me. By the mass, man, you treat me like a boy."

"It's no doing of mine," says Archie. "I was for making you privy to it a week syne; but Ruthven, he said, 'No.' You were still Chancellor, d'ye see? And, says Ruthven, your lordship was a tappit hen, that would sit till they took the last egg from under ye."

"Damn his black tongue!" growled my lord, and looked at his letters.

"But

“Cold,

"They morn,

in your seat?"

แ

Ay, I think it, I think it. She will give it to one of her familiars-her Huntly, or her fine Bothwell."

Archie once more snapped his fingers. "Nor one, nor t'other. There's a man more familiar than the pair. Cousin, the fiddler seals the briefs! The Italian is to be Chancellor. Now what d'ye say y?"

Lord Morton said nothing at all. He looked up, he looked down; he screwed his hands together, rolled one softly over the other.

Archie watched his heavy face grow darker as the tide of rage crept up. Presently he tried to move him.

"Are you for England, cousin?" he asked.

"Ay," said Morton, "that is my road." Archie then touched him on the shoulder. "Bide a while, my lord. We shall all be friends here before many days. Argyll is here."

(6 Argyll? The fine man!"
"A finer follows him hard."
"Who then? Your sage Maitland?"

"Maitland!

Hoots! no; but the black Earl of Moray, my good lord." The Earl of Morton stopped in the act of whistling.

"Moray comes home ?"

"Ay. His forfeiture is set for the 12th. He is coming home to meet it. All's ready."

Morton was greatly interested. Το gain time he asked an idle question. "Who has written him to come? Maitland?”

"Ay, Michael Wylie."

This was the name they gave him. Machiavelli may be intended-if so, an injustice to each.

"Who returns with my lord?" Morton asked him next; and Archie held up his fingers.

All of them that are now in England. Rothes, Pitarrow, Grange-all of them. Stout men, cousin."

Stout indeed! One of them had been enough for Master Davy. My Lord Morton, his head sunk into his portly chest, considered this news. Moray was an assurance-for how did Moray strike? In the dark-quickly-when no one was by. Well, then, if Moray were coming to strike one's enemy, why should one meddle? He was never at his ease in that great man's company, because he could never be sure of his own aims while he doubted those of his colleague. You could not tell-you never could tell—what James Stuart intended. He would cut at one for the sake of hitting another at a distance. If he were coming back to cut at the Italian, for instance—at what other did he hope to reach? Morton drove his slow wits to work as he sat staring at his papers, trying vainly to bottom the designs of a man whom he admired and distrusted profoundly. Why so much force to scrag a wretched Italian? The King, Archie, Moray, Grange, Pitarrow, Argyll! And now himself, Morton ! At whom was Moray aiming? Was he entangling the King, whom he hated? Could he be working against the Queen, his sister? They used to say he coveted the throne. Could this be his intent?

Such possibilities disturbed him. Let me do Lord Morton the justice to say that his very grossness saved him from any more curious villainy than a quick blow at an enemy. The Italian had galled his dignity: damn the dog! he would kill him for it. But to intend

otherwise than loyalty to the King, his kinsman-no, no! And as for the Queen's Majesty-why, she was a lass! And a pretty lass too, though a wilful. She would never have stood in his way but for that beastly foreign whisperer. Yet if the King had been dishonoured by the fiddler, and Moray (knowing that) meant honestly.... Eh, sirs! So he pondered in his dull, muddled way-his poor wits, like yoked oxen, heavily plodding the fields of speculation, turning furrow after furrow! Guess how he vexed the nimble Archie.

“Well, cousin, well?" cries that youth at last: "I must be going where my friends await me."

"Man," said Morton, and stopped him, "where are ye for?"

Archie replied: "Mum's the word. But if you are the man I believe you, you shall come along with me this night." Morton had made up his mind. am with you-for good or ill," he said.

Cloaked and booted, the two kinsmen went out into the dark. The wind had got up, bringing a scurry of dry snow: they had to pull the door hard to get it home.

"Rough work at sea the night," said Archie.

"You'll be brewing it rougher on land, I doubt," was Lord Morton's commentary.

In a little crow-stepped house by the shore of the Nor' Loch the Earl of Morton was required to set his hand to certain papers, upon which they showed him the names of Argyll, Rothes, Ruthven, Archie Douglas, Maitland, and others. He asked at once to see Lord Moray's name: they told him Maitland had it to a letter, which bound him as fast as any bond.

"It should be here," he said seriously. But Ruthven cried out, How could it be there when his lordship was over the Border?

Morton shook his head. "It should be here, gentlemen. "Twere better to wait for it. What hurry is there?"

Ruthven said that the game was begun and ought now to go on. "Judge you, my lord," he appealed, "if I should put my head into a noose unless I held the cord in my own hand.”

In his private mind Morton believed

Ruthven a madman. But he did not see how he could draw out now.

He read through the two papersbands, they called them. It was required of those who signed that they should assist the King their sovereign lord to get the Crown-Matrimonial-no harm in that!

On

and that they should stand enemies to his enemies, friends to his friends. his side, the King engaged to remove the forfeiture from the exiled lords, to put back the Earl of Morton into his office, and to establish the Protestant religion. Not a word of the Italian, not a word of the Queen. The things were well worded, evidently by Maitland.

"When are we to be at it ?" he asked. Ruthven told him, "Saturday coming, at night."

It was now Thursday. "How shall you deal?" Morton again.

66

This was

He was told, In the small hours of the night and there he stopped them at once. Oh, Ruthven ! Oh, Lindsay! Never on the Sabbath morn! Sirs, ye should not

But Ruthven waved him off. The exact hour, he said, must depend upon events. This, however, was the plan proposed. When the Queen was set down to cards or a late supper, Lord Morton with his men was to hold the entry, doors, stairheads, passages, forecourt of the palace. Traquair would be off duty, Erskine could be dealt with. Bothwell, Huntly, Atholl, and all the rest of the Queen's friends would be abed; and Lindsay was to answer for keeping them there. The King was to go into the Queen's closet and look over her shoulder at the game. At a moment agreed upon he would lift up her chin, say certain words, kiss her, and repeat the words. That was to be the signal: then Ruthven, Archie Douglas, and Fawdonsyde-Ker of Fawdonsyde, a notorious ruffian-would do their work.

Morton listened to all this intently, with slow-travelling eyes which followed the rafters from their spring in one wall to their cobwebbed end in the other. He could find no flaw at first, nor put his finger upon the damnable blot there must be in it; but after a time, as he figured it over and over, he missed somebody. "Stop there! stop there, you Ruthven!" he thundered. "Tell me this: Where will Maitland be the while?"

He was told, "Gone to meet the Earl of Moray." Moray!—his jaw fell.

"What! will Moray no be with me?" They said, it was much hoped. But the roads were heavy; there was a possibility

He jeered at them. Did they not know Moray yet? "Man," he said, turning to Archie, "it's not a possibility, it's as certain as the Day of Doom."

Then they all talked at once. Moray's name was fast to a letter; the letter was fast in Maitland's poke; Maitland was fast to the band. What more could be done? Would Maitland endanger his neck? His safety was Moray's, and theirs was Maitland's. And the King? What of the King?

"You talk of Doomsday, my lord! shouts Ruthven, with the slaver of his rage upon his mouth: "there's but one doom impending, and we'll see to it."

Perorations had no effect upon Morton, who was still bothered. He went over the whole again, clawing down his fingers as he numbered the points. There was himself to keep the palace, there was Lindsay to hold back Bothwell; the King to go into the closet-the kiss--the words of signal-then Ruthven andHere he stopped, and his eyes grew small. Oh, sirs," he said, "the poor lassie ! Sold with a kiss! She's big, sirs; you'll likely kill mother and bairn."

66

Ruthven, squinting fearfully, slammed the table. "Whose bairn, by the Lord? Tell me whose?" Morton shook his head. "Yon's hellwork," he said. "I'll have nothing to do wi't. I guess who's had the devising of it. 'TIS Maitland-a grey-faced thief."

Here Archie Douglas, after looking to Ruthven, intervened, and talked for nearly half an hour to his cousin. Morton, very gloomy, heard him out; then made his own proposition. He would stand by the King, he said; he would hold the palace. No man should come in or out without the password. But he would not go upstairs, nor know who went up or what went on. This also he would have them all promise before he touched the bond with a pen :-Whatever was done to the Italian should be done in the passage. There should be no filthy butchery of a girl and her child, either directly or by implication, where he had a hand at a job. Such was his firm stipulation. Archie swore to observe it; Fawdonsyde, Lindsay, swore; Ruthven said nothing.

"Archie, "said his cousin, "go you and fetch me the Scriptures. I shall fasten down Ruthven with the keys of God." Ruthven put his hand upon the book and swore. Then the Earl of Morton signed the bond.