will then admit your Grace to his presence. At present, your Highness must forgive me, it is impossible you can have access.'
'I understand you, MacLouis; but go, nevertheless, and obey my commands.'
The officer went accordingly, and returned with a message that the King was indisposed, and on the point of retiring to his private chamber; but that the Duke of Albany would presently wait upon the Prince of Scotland.
It was, however, a full half hour ere the Duke of Albany appeared—a period of time which Rothsay spent partly in moody silence, and partly in idle talk with MacLouis and the Brandanes, as the levity or irritability of his temper obtained the ascendant.
At length the Duke came, and with him the lord High Constable, whose countenance expressed much sorrow and embarrassment.
'Fair kinsman,' said the Duke of Albany, 'I grieve to say that it is my royal brother's opinion that it will be best, for the honour of the royal family, that your Royal Highness do restrict yourself for a time to the seclusion of the High Constable's lodgings, and accept of the noble Earl here present for your principal, if not sole, companion until the scandals which have been this day spread abroad shall be refuted or forgotten.'
'How is this, my lord of Errol?' said the Prince in astonishment. 'Is your house to be my jail, and is your lordship to be my jailer?'
'The saints forbid, my lord,' said the Earl of Errol 'but it is my unhappy duty to obey the commands of your father, by considering your Royal Highness for some time as being under my ward.'
'The Prince—the heir of Scotland, under the ward of the High Constable! What reason can be given for this? is the blighting speech of a convicted recreant of strength sufficient to tarnish my royal escutcheon?'
'While such accusations are not refuted and denied, my kinsman,' said the Duke of Albany, 'they will contaminate that of a monarch.'
'Denied, my lord!' exclaimed the Prince; 'by whom are they asserted, save by a wretch too infamous, even by his own confession, to be credited for a moment, though a beggar's character, not a prince's, were impeached? Fetch him hither, let the rack be shown to him; you will soon hear him retract the calumny which he dared to assert!'
'The gibbet has done its work too surely to leave Bonthron sensible to the rack,' said the Duke of Albany. 'He has been executed an hour since.'
'And why such haste, my lord?' said the Prince; 'know you it looks as if there were practice in it to bring a stain on my name?'
'The custom is universal, the defeated combatant in the ordeal of battle is instantly transferred from the lists to the gallows. And yet, fair kinsman,' continued the Duke of Albany, 'if you had boldly and strongly denied the imputation, I would have judged right to keep the wretch alive for further investigation; but as your Highness was silent, I deemed it best to stifle the scandal in the breath of him that uttered it.'
'St. Mary, my lord, but this is too insulting! Do you, my uncle and kinsman, suppose me guilty of prompting such an useless and unworthy action as that which the slave confessed?'
'It is not for me to bandy question with your Highness, otherwise I would ask whether you also mean to deny the scarce less unworthy, though less bloody, attack upon the house in Couvrefew Street? Be not angry with me, kinsman; but, indeed, your sequestering yourself for some brief space from the court, were it only during the King's residence in this city, where so much offence has been given, is imperiously demanded.'
Rothsay paused when he heard this exhortation, and, looking at the Duke in a very marked manner, replied:
'Uncle, you are a good huntsman. You have pitched your toils with much skill, but you would have been foiled, not withstanding, had not the stag rushed among the nets of free will. God speed you, and may you have the profit by this matter which your measures deserve. Say to my father, I obey his arrest. My Lord High Constable, I wait only your pleasure to attend you to your lodgings. Since I am to lie in ward, I could not have desired a kinder or more courteous warden.'
The interview between the uncle and nephew being thus concluded, the Prince retired with the Earl of Errol to his apartments; the citizens whom they met in the streets passing to the further side when they observed the Duke of Rothsay, to escape the necessity of saluting one whom they had been taught to consider as a ferocious as well as unprincipled libertine. The Constable's lodgings received the owner and his princely guest, both glad to leave the streets, yet neither feeling easy in the situation which they occupied with regard to each other within doors.
We must return to the lists after the combat had ceased, and when the nobles had withdrawn. The crowds were now separated into two distinct bodies. That which made the smallest in number was at the same time the most distinguished for respectability, consisting of the better class of inhabitants of Perth, who were congratulating the successful champion and each other upon the triumphant conclusion to which they had brought their feud with the courtiers. The magistrates were so much elated on the occasion, that they entreated Sir Patrick Charteris's acceptance of a collation in the town hall. To this Henry, the hero of the day, was of course invited, or he was rather commanded to attend. He listened to the summons with great embarrassment, for it may be readily believed his heart was with Catharine Glover. But the advice of his father Simon decided him. That veteran citizen had a natural and becoming deference for the magistracy of the Fair City; he entertained a high estimation of all honours which flowed from such a source, and thought that his intended son in law would do wrong not to receive them with gratitude.
'Thou must not think to absent thyself from such a solemn occasion, son Henry,' was his advice. 'Sir Patrick Charteris is to be there himself, and I think it will be a rare occasion for thee to gain his goodwill. It is like he may order of thee a new suit of harness; and I myself heard worthy Bailie Craigdallie say there was a talk of furbishing up the city's armoury. Thou must not neglect the good trade, now that thou takest on thee an expensive family.'
'Tush, father Glover,' answered the embarrassed victor, 'I lack no custom; and thou knowest there is Catharine, who may wonder at my absence, and have her ear abused once more by tales of glee maidens and I wot not what.'
'Fear not for that,' said the glover, 'but go, like an obedient burgess, where thy betters desire to have thee. I do not deny that it will cost thee some trouble to make thy peace with Catharine about this duel; for she thinks herself wiser in such matters than king and council, kirk and canons, provost and bailies. But I will take up the quarrel with her myself, and will so work for thee, that, though she may receive thee tomorrow with somewhat of a chiding, it shall melt into tears and smiles, like an April morning, that begins with a mild shower. Away with thee, then, my son, and be constant to the time, tomorrow morning after mass.'
The smith, though reluctantly, was obliged to defer to the reasoning of his proposed father in law, and, once determined to accept the honour destined for him by the fathers of the city, he extricated himself from the crowd, and hastened home to put on his best apparel; in which he presently afterwards repaired to the council house, where the ponderous oak table seemed to bend under the massy dishes of choice Tay salmon and delicious sea fish from Dundee, being the dainties which the fasting season permitted, whilst neither wine, ale, nor metheglin were wanting to wash them down. The waits, or minstrels of the burgh, played during the repast, and in the intervals of the music one of them recited With great emphasis a long poetical account of the battle of Blackearnside, fought by Sir William Wallace and his redoubted captain and friend, Thomas of Longueville, against the English general Seward—a theme perfectly familiar to all the guests, who, nevertheless, more tolerant than their descendants, listened as if it had all the zest of novelty. It was complimentary to the ancestor of the Knight of Kinfauns, doubtless, and to other Perthshire families, in passages which the audience applauded vociferously, whilst they pledged each other in mighty draughts to the memory of the heroes who had fought by the side of the Champion of Scotland. The health of Henry Wynd was quaffed with repeated shouts, and the provost announced publicly, that the magistrates were consulting how they might best invest him with some distinguished privilege or honorary reward, to show how highly his fellow citizens valued his courageous exertions.
'Nay, take it not thus, an it like your worships,' said the smith, with his usual blunt manner, 'lest men say that valour must be rare in Perth when they reward a man for fighting for the right of a forlorn widow. I am sure there are many scores of stout burghers in the town who would have done this day's dargue as well or better than I. For, in good sooth, I ought to have cracked yonder fellow's head piece like an earthen pipkin—ay, and would have done it, too, if it had not been one which I myself tempered for Sir John Ramorny. But, an the Fair City think my service of any worth, I will conceive it far more than acquitted by any aid which you may afford from the
