ay out of the murderous human ring that
fenced them round.

"What d'ye seek? What d'ye seek?" he screeched, in a pitiful attempt to
question with authority.

A tall man in a trailing cloak advanced and seized him.

"We seek thee, fool!" said the voice of Bothwell.

The kingliness that he had never known how to wear becomingly now fell
from him utterly.

"Mercy--mercy!" he cried.

"Such mercy as you had on David Rizzio!" answered the Border lord.

Darnley fell on his knees and sought to embrace the murderer's legs.
Bothwell stooped over him, seized the wretched man's shirt, and pulled
it from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about the royal
neck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight, nor relaxed his
hold until the young man's struggles had entirely ceased.

Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in the
chapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there, as a
contemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, "not only without grief,
but with greedy eyes." Thereafter it was buried secretly in the night by
Rizzio's side, so that murderer and victim lay at peace together in the
end.

III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL--Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain

"You a Spaniard of Spain?" had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous. "I
do not believe it."

And upon that she had put spur to the great black horse that bore her
and had ridden off along the precipitous road by the river.

After her he had flung his answer on a note of laughter, bitter and
cynical as the laughter of the damned, laughter that expressed all
things but mirth.

"Oh, a Spaniard of Spain, indeed, Madame la Marquise. Very much a
Spaniard of Spain, I assure you."

The great black horse and the woman in red flashed round a bend of
the rocky road and were eclipsed by a clump of larches. The man leaned
heavily upon his ebony cane, sighed wearily, and grew thoughtful. Then,
with a laugh and a shrug, he sat down in the shade of the firs that
bordered the road. Behind him, crowning the heights, loomed the brown
castle built by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, two hundred years ago,
and the Tower of Montauzet, its walls scarred by the shots of the
rebellious Biscayans. Below him, nourished by the snows that were
dissolving under the sunshine of early spring, sped the tumbling river;
beyond this spread pasture and arable land to the distant hills, and
beyond those stood the gigantic sharp-summited