your honour's Grace," replied English Wat, "I confess it was
very familiar in me to be sober when it was your Grace's pleasure that
your train should be mad drunk; but in respect they were all Scottishmen
but myself, I thought it argued no policy in getting drunken in their
company, seeing that they only endure me even when we are all sober, and
if the wine were uppermost, I might tell them a piece of my mind, and be
paid with as many stabs as there are skenes in the good company."

"So it is your purpose never to join any of the revels of our
household?"

"Under favour, yes; unless it be your Grace's pleasure that the residue
of your train should remain one day sober, to admit Will Watkins to get
drunk without terror of his life."

"Such occasion may arrive. Where dost thou serve, Watkins?"

"In the stable, so please you."

"Let our chamberlain bring thee into the household, as a yeoman of the
night watch. I like thy favour, and it is something to have one sober
fellow in the house, although he is only such through the fear of death.
Attend, therefore, near our person; and thou shalt find sobriety a
thriving virtue."

Meantime a load of care and fear added to the distress of Sir John
Ramorny's sick chamber. His reflections, disordered as they were by the
opiate, fell into great confusion when the Prince, in whose presence he
had suppressed its effect by strong resistance, had left the apartment.
His consciousness, which he had possessed perfectly during the
interview, began to be very much disturbed. He felt a general sense
that he had incurred a great danger, that he had rendered the Prince his
enemy, and that he had betrayed to him a secret which might affect his
own life. In this state of mind and body, it was not strange that he
should either dream, or else that his diseased organs should become
subject to that species of phantasmagoria which is excited by the use
of opium. He thought that the shade of Queen Annabella stood by his
bedside, and demanded the youth whom she had placed under his charge,
simple, virtuous, gay, and innocent.

"Thou hast rendered him reckless, dissolute, and vicious," said the
shade of pallid Majesty. "Yet I thank thee, John of Ramorny, ungrateful
to me, false to thy word, and treacherous to my hopes. Thy hate shall
counteract the evil which thy friendship has done to him. And well do
I hope that, now thou art no longer his counsellor, a bitter penance on
earth may purchase my il