inventing, some say, the national lilt, the
rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so
adaptable to mirth--"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and
disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the
conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group
within. The King was taken at a disadvantage, apparently without even a
gentleman of his Court near him, nothing but his wife and her ladies
lingering for a last moment of pleasant conversation before they went to
bed. It is easy to imagine the horror with which the little party must
have listened to the rush of the savage band, hoping perhaps at first
that it was but some tumult in the street, or affray between the
townsfolk and the caterans--never very far off and often threatening St.
John's town--till the cries and clashing of the arms came nearer, and
wild torch-light flared through the high windows and proved the fatal
object of the raid. The groans of a few easily despatched sentinels, the
absence of any serious opposition or stand in defence, the horrible
discovery of bolts and bars removed and the King at the mercy of his
enemies, must have followed in a few terrible moments. No incident in
history is better known than that piteous attempt of one distracted
girl, a Douglas, born of a heroic race, to bar the door with her own
slim arm, thrusting it through the holdfasts from which the bolt had
been taken away: poor ineffectual bar! yet enough to gain a moment when
moments were so precious, and while there was still a chance of saving
the King.

The narrative of the death struggle, and the distracted attempts to find
a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be
repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him,
hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that
some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to
the scaffold to be killed in their turn with every circumstance of
horror conceivable some time later. The execution of these miserable
traitors, one of them the King's own uncle Athole, took place at
Edinburgh for the greater solemnity and terror of the punishment, which
was accomplished by every kind of torture. The Queen, too, after the
horrible scene of which she had been a witness, and almost more than a
witness--for she had thrown herself before her husband and had been
wounded in the terrible struggle--gat