e postern, or perhaps at the
gate near the Well-house Tower, where the little well of St. Margaret
now bubbles up unconsidered, and so across the Nor' Loch, by boat or
ford. Bishop Beatoun, he whose conscience clattered beneath his robes,
fled again to the Blackfriars Church, where Mr. Gawin had found him on
the previous evening prepared for mischief, and took refuge there behind
the altar, where he was pursued and "his rockit rivin aff him, and had
been slain," but that Gawin Douglas, following the pursuers, perhaps
with a sarcastic satisfaction in setting forth the virtues of a peaceful
robe over the warlike covering that invited as well as preserved from
danger, interposed, saying, "It was shame to put hand on ane consecreat
bishop." The encounter of these two priests by evening and morning, the
supercilious refusal of the mail-clad bishop to interfere, and pretence
of ignorance--and, as one may imagine, the watch over him from afar of
his brother of Dunkeld with the full intention of peaceful yet effective
reprisals, throw a light of grim humour upon the warlike scene. Maister
Gawin had no mail-coat, and would not fight; but he must have kept an
eye upon his natural foe through the fray, and it would be strange if he
had not some pleasure in perceiving the rochet, which Beatoun must have
donned hastily to save himself, pulled over his head by rude hands in
scorn of the priestly pretence--and some satisfaction in interposing to
preserve the "consecreat bishop," whose behaviour was so little saintly.

"Thereafter the Earl of Angus passed to the castle and spoke with the
Queen at his pleasure," says Pitscottie. It could not be a very gracious
or affectionate interview. For Margaret and her husband had long before
come to a complete breach, and the greatest desire in her mind was to
divorce the young man whom she had married so hastily, who had treated
her, indeed, with little consideration, and whom she had come to hate
with a bitterness only possible to husbands and wives ill paired.

After this the young King passed from hand to hand, from one guardian or
captor to another, according to the custom of his predecessors, with
many troubled vicissitudes in his life: but it is pleasant to believe
that though the story leaves a painful impression as of a distracted
childhood, continually dragged about and harassed between contending
forces, yet that persistent placidity of nature which plants flowers
upon the very edge of