The fat Earl hemmed and hawed, clearing his throat to gain time, and
knitting and unknitting his fingers over his stomach.

"Being a near kinsman," he said at last, "it is not seemly that I
should say aught against the Earl of Douglas; but this I do
know--there will be no peace in Scotland till that young man and his
brother are both cut off."

The Chancellor and de Retz exchanged glances. The anxiety of the
next-of-kin to the title of Earl of Douglas for the peace and
prosperity of the realm seemed to strike them both as exceedingly
natural in the circumstances.

"And now, Sir Alexander, what say you?" asked the Sieur de Retz,
turning to the King's guardian, who had been caressing the curls of
his beard with his white and signeted hand.

"I agree," he replied in a courtly tone, "that in the interests of the
King and of the noble lady whose care for her child hath led her to
such sacrifices, we ought to put a limit to the pride and insolence of
this youth!"

The Chancellor bent over a parchment to hide a smile at the sacrifices
which the Queen Mother had made for her son.

"It is indeed, doubtless," said Sir William Crichton, "a sacrifice
that the King and his mother should dwell so long within this Castle
of Stirling, exposed to every rude blast from off these barren
Grampians. Let her bring him to the mild and equable climate of