How could he ever
hold up his head again? a man who could not keep his own kingdom from
invasion, or avenge himself upon his enemies! After he had lingered a
little in Edinburgh, where the Queen was now near the moment which
should give another heir to Scotland, he left the capital--perhaps to
save her at such a time from the sight and the contagion of his
despair--and crossed the Firth to Falkland, a place so associated with
stirring passages in his career. But there his sickness of heart turned
to illness of body; he became so "vehement sick" that his life was
despaired of; he was "very near strangled to death by extreme
melancholie." One hope remained, that the Queen might restore some
confidence to his failing strength and mind by an heir to the crown,
another James, for whom it might be worth while to live. James sent for
some of his friends, "certain of his lords, both spiritual and
temporal," to help him to bear this time of suspense, and advise him
what might yet be done to set matters right, who surrounded him, as may
be imagined, very anxiously, fearing the issue.

"By this the post came out of Linlithgow showing the King good
tidings that the Queen was delivered. The King inquired whether it
was man or woman. The messenger said it was ane fair dochter. The
King answered and said, 'Farewell! it came with ane lass, and it
will pass with ane lass,' and so commended himself to Almighty God,
and spoke little from thereforth, but turned his back to his lords
and his face to the wall."

Even at this bitter moment, however, the dying Prince was not left alone
with his last disappointment. Cardinal Beatoun, whose influence had been
so inauspicious in his life, pressed forward, "seeing him begin to fail
of his strength and natural speech," and thrust upon him a paper for his
signature, "wherein the Cardinal had writ what he pleased for his own
particular weill," evidently with some directions about the regency,
that ordeal which Scotland, unhappily, had now again to go through. When
James had put his dying hand to this authority, wrested from him in his
last weakness, a faint light of peace seems to have fallen across his
death-bed.

[Illustration: FALKLAND PALACE]

"As I have shown you, he turned him upon his back, and looked and
beheld his lords around about, and gave ane little lauchter, syne
kissed his hand and gave it to all his lords about him, and
thereafter held