continue to influence his conduct. I then regretted I had advised a fine in place of exile. But that time is passed, and now new mischief has occurred, fraught with much peril to your Majesty, as well as to your royal heir, and to the whole kingdom.'
'What mean you, Robin?' said the weak minded King. 'By the tomb of our parents! by the soul of Bruce, our immortal ancestor! I entreat thee, my dearest brother, to take compassion on me. Tell me what evil threatens my son, or my kingdom?'
The features of the King, trembling with anxiety, and his eyes brimful of tears, were bent upon his brother, who seemed to assume time for consideration ere he replied.
'My lord, the danger lies here. Your Grace believed that the Prince had no accession to this second aggression upon the citizens of Perth—the slaughter of this bonnet making fellow, about whose death they clamour, as a set of gulls about their comrade, when one of the noisy brood is struck down by a boor's shaft.'
'Their lives,' said the King, 'are dear to themselves and their friends, Robin.'
'Truly, ay, my liege; and they make them dear to us too, ere we can settle with the knaves for the least blood wit. But, as I said, your Majesty thinks the Prince had no share in this last slaughter; I will not attempt to shake your belief in that delicate point, but will endeavour to believe along with you. What you think is rule for me, Robert of Albany will never think otherwise than Robert of broad Scotland.'
'Thank you, thank you,' said the King, taking his brother's hand. 'I knew I might rely that your affection would do justice to poor heedless Rothsay, who exposes himself to so much misconstruction that he scarcely deserves the sentiments you feel for him.'
Albany had such an immovable constancy of purpose, that he was able to return the fraternal pressure of the King's hand, while tearing up by the very roots the hopes of the indulgent, fond old man.
'But, alas!' the Duke continued, with a sigh, 'this burly, intractable Knight of Kinfauns, and his brawling herd of burghers, will not view the matter as we do. They have the boldness to say that this dead fellow had been misused by Rothsay and his fellows, who were in the street in mask and revel, stopping men and women, compelling them to dance, or to drink huge quantities of wine, with other follies needless to recount; and they say that the whole party repaired in Sir John Ramorny's, and broke their way into the house in order to conclude their revel there, thus affording good reason to judge that the dismissal of Sir John from the Prince's service was but a feigned stratagem to deceive the public. And hence they urge that, if ill were done that night by Sir John Ramorny or his followers, much it is to be thought that the Duke of Rothsay must have at least been privy to, if he did not authorise, it.'
'Albany, this is dreadful!' said the King. 'Would they make a murderer of my boy? would they pretend my David would soil his hands in Scottish blood without having either provocation or purpose? No—no, they will not invent calumnies so broad as these, for they are flagrant and incredible.'
'Pardon, my liege,' answered the Duke of Albany; 'they say the cause of quarrel which occasioned the riot in Curfew Street, and, its consequences, were more proper to the Prince than to Sir John, since none suspects, far less believes, that that hopeful enterprise was conducted for the gratification of the knight of Ramorny.'
'Thou drivest me mad, Robin!' said the King.
'I am dumb,' answered his brother; 'I did but speak my poor mind according to your royal order.'
'Thou meanest well, I know,' said the King; 'but, instead of tearing me to pieces with the display of inevitable calamities, were it not kinder, Robin, to point me out some mode to escape from them?'
'True, my liege; but as the only road of extrication is rough and difficult, it is necessary your Grace should be first possessed with the absolute necessity of using it, ere you hear it even described. The chirurgeon must first convince his patient of the incurable condition of a shattered member, ere he venture to name amputation, though it be the only remedy.'
The King at these words was roused to a degree of alarm and indignation greater than his brother had deemed he could be awakened to.
'Shattered and mortified member, my Lord of Albany! amputation the only remedy! These are unintelligible words, my lord. If thou appliest them to our son Rothsay, thou must make them good to the letter, else mayst thou have bitter cause to rue the consequence.'
'You construe me too literally, my royal liege,' said Albany. 'I spoke not of the Prince in such unbeseeming terms, for I call Heaven to witness that he is dearer to me as the son of a well beloved brother than had he been son of my own. But I spoke in regard to separating him from the follies and vanities of life, which holy men say are like to mortified members, and ought, like them, to be cut off and thrown from us, as things which interrupt our progress in better things.'
'I understand—thou wouldst have this Ramorny, who hath been thought the instrument of my son's follies, exiled from court,' said the relieved monarch, 'until these unhappy scandals are forgotten, and our subjects are disposed to look upon our son with different and more confiding eyes.'
'That were good counsel, my liege; but mine went a little—a very little—farther. I would have the Prince himself removed for some brief period from court.'
'How, Albany! part with my child, my firstborn, the light of my eyes, and—wilful as he is—the darling of my heart! Oh, Robin! I cannot, and I will not.'
'Nay, I did but suggest, my lord; I am sensible of the wound such a proceeding must inflict on a parent's heart, for am I not myself a father?' And he hung his head, as if in hopeless despondency.
'I could not survive it, Albany. When I think that even our own influence over him, which, sometimes forgotten in our absence, is ever effectual whilst he is with us, is by your plan to be entirely removed, what perils might he not rush upon? I could not sleep in his absence—I should hear his death groan in every breeze; and you, Albany, though you conceal it better, would be nearly as anxious.'
Thus spoke the facile monarch, willing to conciliate his brother and cheat himself, by taking it for granted that an affection, of which there were no traces, subsisted betwixt the uncle and nephew.
'Your paternal apprehensions are too easily alarmed, my lord,' said Albany. 'I do not propose to leave the disposal of the Prince's motions to his own wild pleasure. I understand that the Prince is to be placed for a short time under some becoming restraint—that he should be subjected to the charge of some grave counsellor, who must be responsible both for his conduct and his safety, as a tutor for his pupil.'
'How! a tutor, and at Rothsay's age!' exclaimed the' King; 'he is two years beyond the space to which our laws limit the term of nonage.'
'The wiser Romans,' said Albany, 'extended it for four years after the period we assign; and, in common sense, the right of control ought to last till it be no longer necessary, and so the time ought to vary with the disposition. Here is young Lindsay, the Earl of Crawford, who they say gives patronage to Ramorny on this appeal. He is a lad of fifteen, with the deep passions and fixed purpose of a man of thirty; while my royal nephew, with much more amiable and noble qualities both of head and heart, sometimes shows, at twenty-three years of age, the wanton humours of a boy, towards whom restraint may be kindness. And do not be discouraged that it is so, my liege, or angry with your brother for telling the truth; since the best fruits are those that are slowest in ripening, and the best horses such as give most trouble to the grooms who train them for the field or lists.'
The Duke stopped, and, after suffering King Robert to indulge for two or three minutes in a reverie which he did not attempt to interrupt, he added, in a more lively tone: 'But, cheer up, my noble liege; perhaps the feud may be made up without farther fighting or difficulty. The widow is poor, for her husband, though he was much employed, had idle and costly habits. The matter may be therefore redeemed for money, and the amount of an assythment may be recovered out of Ramorny's estate.'
'Nay, that we will ourselves discharge,' said King Robert, eagerly catching at the hope of a pacific termination of this unpleasing debate. 'Ramorny's prospects will be destroyed by his being sent from court and deprived of his charge in Rothsay's household, and it would be ungenerous to load a falling man. But here comes our secretary, the prior, to tell us the hour of council approaches. Good morrow, my worthy father.'
'Benedicite, my royal liege,' answered the abbot.
'Now, good father,' continued the King, 'without waiting for Rothsay, whose accession to our counsels we will ourselves guarantee, proceed we to the business of our kingdom. What advices have you from the Douglas?'
'He has arrived at his castle of Tantallon, my liege, and has sent a post to say, that, though the Earl of March remains in sullen seclusion in his fortress of Dunbar, his friends and followers are gathering and forming an encampment near Coldingham, Where it is supposed they intend to await the arrival of a large force of English,
