the threshold of the door, staring at the scene before him, with his buff coat splashed with blood, and a bloody axe in his hand, exhibiting a ghastly and disgusting spectacle to the revellers, who felt, though they could not tell why, fear as well as dislike at his presence.
As they approached the calabash to this ungainly and truculent looking savage, and as he extended a hand soiled as it seemed with blood, to grasp it, the Prince called out:
'Downstairs with him! let not the wretch drink in our presence; find him some other vessel than our holy calabash, the emblem of our revels: a swine's trough were best, if it could be come by. Away with him! let him be drenched to purpose, in atonement for his master's sobriety. Leave me alone with Sir John Ramorny and his page; by my honour, I like not yon ruffian's looks.'
The attendants of the Prince left the apartment, and Eviot alone remained.
'I fear,' said the Prince, approaching the bed in different form from that which he had hitherto used—'I fear, my dear Sir John, that this visit has been unwelcome; but it is your own fault. Although you know our old wont, and were your self participant of our schemes for the evening, you have not come near us since St. Valentine's; it is now Fastern's Even, and the desertion is flat disobedience and treason to our kingdom of mirth and the statutes of the calabash.'
Ramorny raised his head, and fixed a wavering eye upon the Prince; then signed to Eviot to give him something to drink. A large cup of ptisan was presented by the page, which the sick man swallowed with eager and trembling haste. He then repeatedly used the stimulating essence left for the purpose by the leech, and seemed to collect his scattered senses.
'Let me feel your pulse, dear Ramorny,' said the Prince; 'I know something of that craft. How! Do your offer me the left hand, Sir John? that is neither according to the rules of medicine nor of courtesy.'
'The right has already done its last act in your Highness's service,' muttered the patient in a low and broken tone.
'How mean you by that?' said the Prince. 'I am aware thy follower, Black Quentin, lost a hand; but he can steal with the other as much as will bring him to the gallows, so his fate cannot be much altered.'
'It is not that fellow who has had the loss in your Grace's service: it is I, John of Ramorny.'
'You!' said the Prince; 'you jest with me, or the opiate still masters your reason.'
'If the juice of all the poppies in Egypt were blended in one draught,' said Ramorny, 'it would lose influence over me when I look upon this.' He drew his right arm from beneath the cover of the bedclothes, and extending it towards the Prince, wrapped as it was in dressings, 'Were these undone and removed,' he said, 'your Highness would see that a bloody stump is all that remains of a hand ever ready to unsheath the sword at your Grace's slightest bidding.'
Rothsay started back in horror. 'This,' he said, 'must be avenged!'
'It is avenged in small part,' said Ramorny—'that is, I thought I saw Bonthron but now; or was it that the dream of hell that first arose in my mind when I awakened summoned up an image so congenial? Eviot, call the miscreant—that is, if he is fit to appear.'
Eviot retired, and presently returned with Bonthron, whom he had rescued from the penance, to him no unpleasing infliction, of a second calabash of wine, the brute having gorged the first without much apparent alteration in his demeanour.
'Eviot,' said the Prince, 'let not that beast come nigh me. My soul recoils from him in fear and disgust: there is something in his looks alien from my nature, and which I shudder at as at a loathsome snake, from which my instinct revolts.'
'First hear him speak, my lord,' answered Ramorny; 'unless a wineskin were to talk, nothing could use fewer words. Hast thou dealt with him, Bonthron?'
The savage raised the axe which he still held in his hand, and brought it down again edgeways.
'Good. How knew you your man? the night, I am told, is dark.'
'By sight and sound, garb, gait, and whistle.'
'Enough, vanish! and, Eviot, let him have gold and wine to his brutish contentment. Vanish! and go thou with him.'
'And whose death is achieved?' said the Prince, released from the feelings of disgust and horror under which he suffered while the assassin was in presence. 'I trust this is but a jest! Else must I call it a rash and savage deed. Who has had the hard lot to be butchered by that bloody and brutal slave?'
'One little better than himself,' said the patient, 'a wretched artisan, to whom, however, fate gave the power of reducing Ramorny to a mutilated cripple—a curse go with his base spirit! His miserable life is but to my revenge what a drop of water would be to a furnace. I must speak briefly, for my ideas again wander: it is only the necessity of the moment which keeps them together; as a thong combines a handful of arrows. You are in danger, my lord—I speak it with certainty: you have braved Douglas, and offended your uncle, displeased your father, though that were a trifle, were it not for the rest.'
'I am sorry I have displeased my father,' said the Prince, entirely diverted from so insignificant a thing as the slaughter of an artisan by the more important subject touched upon, 'if indeed it be so. But if I live, the strength of the Douglas shall be broken, and the craft of Albany shall little avail him!'
'Ay—if—if. My lord,' said Ramorny, 'with such opposites as you have, you must not rest upon if or but; you must resolve at once to slay or be slain.'
'How mean you, Ramorny? Your fever makes you rave' answered the Duke of Rothsay.
'No, my lord,' said Ramorny, 'were my frenzy at the highest, the thoughts that pass through my mind at this moment would qualify it. It may be that regret for my own loss has made me desperate, that anxious thoughts for your Highness's safety have made me nourish bold designs; but I have all the judgment with which Heaven has gifted me, when I tell you that, if ever you would brook the Scottish crown, nay, more, if ever you would see another St. Valentine's Day, you must—'
'What is it that I must do, Ramorny?' said the Prince, with an air of dignity; 'nothing unworthy of myself, I hope?'
'Nothing, certainly, unworthy or misbecoming a prince of Scotland, if the bloodstained annals of our country tell the tale truly; but that which may well shock the nerves of a prince of mimes and merry makers.'
'Thou art severe, Sir John Ramorny,' said the Duke of Rothsay, with an air of displeasure; 'but thou hast dearly bought a right to censure us by what thou hast lost in our cause.'
'My Lord of Rothsay,' said the knight, 'the chirurgeon who dressed this mutilated stump told me that the more I felt the pain his knife and brand inflicted, the better was my chance of recovery. I shall not, therefore, hesitate to hurt your feelings, while by doing so I may be able to bring you to a sense of what is necessary for your safety. Your Grace has been the pupil of mirthful folly too long; you must now assume manly policy, or be crushed like a butterfly on the bosom of the flower you are sporting on.'
'I think I know your cast of morals, Sir John: you are weary of merry folly—the churchmen call it vice—and long for a little serious crime. A murder, now, or a massacre, would enhance the flavour of debauch, as the taste of the olive gives zest to wine. But my worst acts are but merry malice: I have no relish for the bloody trade, and abhor to see or hear of its being acted even on the meanest caitiff. Should I ever fill the throne, I suppose, like my father before me, I must drop my own name, and be dubbed Robert, in honour of the Bruce; well, an if it be so, every Scots lad shall have his flag on in one hand and the other around his lass's neck, and manhood shall be tried by kisses and bumpers, not by dirks and dourlachs; and they shall write on my grave, 'Here lies Robert, fourth of his name. He won not battles like Robert the First. He rose not from a count to a king like Robert the Second. He founded not churches like Robert the Third, but was contented to live and die king of good fellows!' Of all my two centuries of ancestors, I would only emulate the fame of—
'Old King Coul, Who had a brown bowl.'
'My gracious lord,' said Ramorny, 'let me remind you that your joyous revels involve serious evils. If I had lost this hand in fighting to attain for your Grace some important advantage over your too powerful enemies, the loss would never have grieved me. But to be reduced from helmet and steel coat to biggin and gown in a night brawl—'
'Why, there again now, Sir John,' interrupted the reckless Prince. 'How canst thou be so unworthy as to be for ever flinging thy bloody hand in my face, as the ghost of Gaskhall threw his head at Sir William Wallace? Bethink thee, thou art more unreasonable than Fawdyon himself; for wight Wallace had swept his head off in somewhat a hasty humour, whereas I would gladly stick thy hand on again, were that possible. And, hark thee,
