here in her presence. Rizzio, who had risen, stood now beside
her, watching all with a white, startled face. And then, before more
could be said, the curtains were torn away and half a score of men,
whose approach had passed unnoticed, poured into the room. First came
Morton, the Chancellor, who was to be dispossessed of the great seal
in Rizzio's favour. After him followed the brutal Lindsay of the Byres,
Kerr of Faudonside, black-browed Brunston, red-headed Douglas, and a
half-dozen others.

Confusion ensued; the three men of the Queen's household were instantly
surrounded and overpowered. In the brief, sharp struggle the table was
overturned, and all would have been in darkness but that as the table
went over the Countess of Argyll had snatched up the candle-branch, and
stood now holding it aloft to light that extraordinary scene. Rizzio, to
whom the sight of Morton had been as the removal of his last illusion,
flung himself upon his knees before the Queen. Frail and feeble of body,
and never a man of his hands, he was hopelessly unequal to the occasion.

"Justice, madame!" he cried. "Faites justice! Sauvez ma vie!"

Fearlessly, she stepped between him and the advancing horde of
murderers, making of her body a buckler for his protection. White
of face, with heaving bosom and eyes like two glowing sapphires, she
confronted them.

"Back, on your lives!" she bade them.

But they were lost to all sense of reverence, even to all sense of
decency, in their blind rage against this foreign upstart who had
trampled their Scottish vanity in the dust. George Douglas, without
regard for her condition either as queen or woman--and a woman almost
upon the threshold of motherhood--clapped a pistol to her breast and
roughly bade her stand aside.

Undaunted, she looked at him with eyes that froze his trigger-finger,
whilst behind her Rizzio grovelled in his terror, clutching her
petticoat. Thus, until suddenly she was seized about the waist and half
dragged, half-lifted aside by Darnley, who at the same time spurned
Rizzio forward with his foot.

The murderers swooped down upon their prey. Kerr of Faudonside flung
a noose about his body, and drew it tight with a jerk that pulled the
secretary from his knees. Then he and Morton took the rope between
them, and so dragged their victim across the room towards the door.
He struggled blindly as he went, vainly clutching first at an overset
chair, then at a leg of the table, and sc