for other
beacons from hill to hill to bear the news to Mar--as the lights along
the Argive hills carried the tale of Troy's fall to Argos. The plan
was an utter failure. It broke down in two places. One of the
conspirators told his brother; the brother told his wife; the lady took
alarm, and sent an anonymous letter disclosing the whole plot to the
Lord Justice Clerk. Yet even then, had the conspirators been in time,
their plan might have succeeded; for the anonymous letter did not reach
its destination till an hour after the time appointed to make the
attempt on the Castle. But the conspirators were not punctual. Some
of them were in a tavern in Edinburgh, drinking to the success of their
enterprise. Every one in the neighborhood seems to have known what
their enterprise was, to have had some sympathy with it, to have talked
freely about it. Eighteen of these heroes kept up their conviviality
in the tavern till long after the appointed time. The hostess of the
place was heard to say that they were powdering their hair to go to the
attack on the Castle. "A strange sort of powder," Lord Stanhope
remarks, "to provide on such an occasion." Lord Stanhope evidently
takes the hostess's words in a literal sense, and believes that the
lady really meant to say that the jovial conspirators were actually
powdering their locks as if for a ball. We may assume that the hostess
spoke as Hamlet did, "tropically." Whether she did or not--whether
they were really adorning their locks, or simply draining the
flagon--the result was all the same. They came too late; the plot was
discovered; the sympathizing soldiers from the Castle were already
under arrest. The conspirators had to disperse and fly; a few of them
were arrested; {131} their neighbors were only too willing to help them
to escape. It cannot be doubted that there was sympathy enough in
Edinburgh to have made their plan the beginning of a complete
success--if it had only itself been allowed to succeed. But the
disclosure to the lady, and the powder for the hair, brought all to
nothing. The whole story might almost be said to be an allegorical
illustration of the fortunes of the Stuarts. The pint and the
petticoat always came in the way of a success to that cause.

[Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke's dismissal]

When James reached Gravelines, he hurried on to St. Germains. There,
the next morning, Bolingbroke came to see him. Bolingbroke, to do him
justice, had