he warned them to make haste, saying
that he was to be relieved at twelve o'clock, and after that hour he
could give them no aid.

The affair was growing critical. The midnight hour was fast approaching,
and Forbes was still absent. Drummond, the leader, had the sentinel to
draw up the ladder they had with them and fasten it to the battlements,
to see if it were long enough for their purpose. He did so; but it
proved to be more than a fathom short.

[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE.]

And now happened an event fatal to their enterprise. The information
sent the deputy-governor, and his direction that the patrols should be
alert, had the effect of having them make the rounds earlier than usual.
They came at half-past eleven instead of at twelve. The sentinel,
hearing their approaching steps, had but one thing to do for his own
safety. He cried out to the party below, with an oath,--

"Here come the rounds I have been telling you of this half-hour; you
have ruined both yourselves and me; I can serve you no longer."

With these words, he loosened the grappling-irons and flung down the
ladders, and, with the natural impulse to cover his guilty knowledge of
the affair, fired his musket, with a loud cry of "Enemies!"

This alarm cry forced the storming-party to fly with all speed. The
patrol saw them from the wall and fired on them as they scrambled
hastily down the rocks. One of them, an old man, Captain McLean, rolled
down the cliff and was much hurt. He was taken prisoner by a party of
the burgher guard, whom the justice-clerk had sent to patrol the outside
of the walls. They took also three young men, who protested that they
were there by accident, and had nothing to do with the attempt. The rest
of the party escaped. In their retreat they met Charles Forbes, coming
tardily up with the ladders which, a quarter of an hour earlier, might
have made them masters of the castle, but which were now simply an
aggravation.

It does not seem that any one was punished for this attempt, beyond the
treacherous sergeant, who was tried, found guilty, and hanged, and the
deputy-governor, who was deprived of his office and imprisoned for some
time. No proof could be obtained against any one else.

As for the conspirators, indeed, it is probable that the most of them
found their way to the army of the Earl of Mar, who was soon afterwards
in the field at the head of some twelve thousand armed men, pronouncing
himself the general of