sed a wish that the morsel might choke him if he had in any way
been concerned in that murder. Accordingly he there and then put the
morsel into his mouth, and attempted to swallow it; but his efforts
were in vain, it stuck fast in his throat--immovable upward or
downward--his respiration failed, his eyes became fixed, his
countenance convulsed, and in a minute more he fell dead under the
table.

Edward, convinced of the Earl's guilt, and seeing divine justice
manifested, and remembering, it is said, with bitterness the days past
when he had given a willing ear to the calumnies spread about his
innocent mother, cried out, in an indignant voice, "Carry away that
dog, and bury him in the high road." But the body was deposited by the
Earl's cousin in the cathedral.

Several accounts have been written of that terrible banquet, to which
the Earl of Douglas was invited by Sir Alexander Livingstone and the
Chancellor Crichton--who craftily dissembled their intentions--to sup
at the royal table in the Castle of Edinburgh. The Earl was foolhardy
enough to accept the ill-fated invitation, and shortly after he had
taken his place at the festive board, the head of a black bull--the
certain omen, in those days in Scotland, of immediate death--was
placed on the table. The Earl, anticipating treachery, instantly
sprang to his feet, and lost no time in making every effort to escape.
But no chance was given him to do so, and with his younger brother he
was hurried along into the courtyard of the castle, and after being
subjected to a mock trial, he was beheaded "in the back court of the
castle that lieth to the west". The death of the young earl, and his
untimely fate, were the subjects of lament in one of the ballads of
the time.

"Edinburgh castle, town, and tower,
God grant them sink for sin;
And that even for the black dinner
Earl Douglas gat therein."

This emphatic malediction is cited by Hume of Godscroft in his
"History of the House of Douglas," as referring to William, sixth Earl
of Douglas, a youth of eighteen; and Hume, speaking of this
transaction, says, with becoming indignation: "It is sure the people
did abhorre it--execrating the very place where it was done, in
detestation of the fact--of which the memory remaineth yet to our
dayes in these words."

Many similar stories are recorded in the history of the past, the
worst form of treachery oftentimes lurking beneath the festive cup,
and in tim