wickedness in the sweet interspace between the gloaming and the mirk,
when the lamps were being lighted on earth, and in heaven the stars
were coming out.




CHAPTER XXV

THE DOGS AND THE WOLF HOLD COUNCIL


It was a week or two after the date of the great wappenshaw and
tourneying at the Castle of Thrieve, that in the midmost golden haze
of a summer's afternoon four men sat talking together about a table in
a room of the royal palace of Stirling.

No one of the four was any longer young, and one at least was
immoderately fat. This was James, Earl of Avondale, granduncle of the
present Earl of Douglas, and, save for young David, the Earl's
brother, nearest heir to the title and all the estates and honours
pertaining thereto, with the single exception of the Lordship of
Galloway.

The other three were, first, Sir Alexander Livingston, the guardian of
the King's person, a handsome man with a curled beard, who was
supposed to stand high in the immediate favours of the Queen, and who
had long been tutor to his Majesty as well as guardian of his royal
person. Opposite to Livingston, and carefully avoiding his eye, sat a
man of thin and foxy aspect, whose smooth face, small shifty mouth,