gust 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
muti