ng would no doubt be
full of scouts, to give warning of what the discomfited but powerful
family meant to do, and as soon as their approach was known a herald was
sent to the town cross to proclaim by sound of trumpet a royal decree
that neither Angus nor his companions should approach within six miles
of where the King was under pain of death. It is curious to mark how in
a moment the great power of the Douglases and their high courage
collapsed in face of this proclamation. They paused on their hasty ride,
and held another hasty council, and though some among them were for
pressing forward and seizing once more the malapert boy who defied them,
the Earl himself and his brother decided to obey the proclamation and
withdraw. They fell back upon Linlithgow, where they paused a day or two
hoping perhaps for better news. But by this time the other nobles were
crowding round the King. Huntly, Argyle, Athole, Glencairn, Monteith,
and Rothes, with a still larger company of barons, hastened to Stirling
to protect and aid with their counsel the liberated prince. Archbishop
Beatoun, the wily Churchman, who had done all he could to overthrow
Angus,--who had been for a moment so worsted in the conflict that he
skulked about his own Fife moors in the disguise of a shepherd, but who
had lately made friends with the dominant family and entertained the
King and his guardians together, calling them "to his pasche (Easter) at
St. Andrews,"--and who had no doubt known of the momentous night
journey, and probably detained George Douglas late that evening to make
it more sure, had also joined the King.

With this powerful escort James proceeded to Edinburgh, where for some
time the lords around him kept watch night and day, keeping their little
army of attendants under arms in case of any attack on the part of
Angus. One night, we are told, James himself in full armour took the
command of the guard, more probably, however, from a boyish desire to
feel himself at the head of his defenders than for any other reason; and
even his bedchamber was shared, after an unpleasant fashion of the time,
by the bastard of Arran, "James Hamilton, that bloody butcherer," as
Pitscottie calls him, who had precipitated the fray of "Clear the
Causeway" and was Angus's most inveterate enemy. These extraordinary
precautions, however, seem to have been unnecessary. The Douglases would
appear to have accepted their defeat as complete, and to have been
entirely cow