self James implored the wondering people to
fetch him a priest before he died. "Who are you?" they asked, standing
over him. What a world of time had passed in that wild ride! how many
ages since the dying fugitive lying on the dusty floor and covered with
the miller's rug was James Stewart, at the head of a gallant army! "This
morning," he said, with a bitter comprehension of all that had passed
since then, "I was your King." The miller's wife ran forth to her door
calling for a priest, and some one who was passing by answered her call;
but whether he was really a priest, or only one of the stragglers of the
rebel army, seems uncertain. He came into the mill, hearing no doubt the
cries of the astonished couple that it was the King, and kneeling down
recognised the fallen monarch; but instead of hearing his confession,
drew a knife and stabbed him three or four times in the breast. Thus
miserably ended James Stewart, the third of the name.

Of all the tragical conclusions to which his family had come this was
the most deplorable, as his life had been the least satisfactory.
Whether there was more than weakness to be alleged against him it is now
impossible to tell; and whether his favourite companions and occupations
proved a spirit touched to finer issues than those about him, or showed
only, as his barons thought, a preference for low company and paltry
pursuits of peace. But howsoever his patronage of the arts, the
buildings he has left to Scotland, or the tradition of the music and
gentle pleasures which he loved, may justify him to the reader, it is at
least clear that his stewardry of his kingdom was a miserable failure,
and his life a loss and harm to his country. Instead of promoting the
much-interrupted progress of her development, so far as his individual
influence went, he arrested and hindered it. And, difficult as the
position of affairs had been when he succeeded at seven years old to his
father's uncompleted labours, the situation which he left behind him,
the country torn in two, one half of his subjects in arms against the
other, his son's name opposed to his own, and every national benefit
postponed to the settlement of this quarrel, was ten times more
difficult and terrible. He was the first of his name whose influence was
all unfavourable to the progress of the nation, not only by evil
fortune, but by the disasters of a mind not sufficient for the weight
and burden of his time. He thus died ignominiou