"Well," he said to him, "how far have we got?

"Everything is ready," replied Balfour, "and we were waiting for you to
set fire to the fuse". "That is well," Bothwell answered--"but first I
want to make sure that he is in his room."

At these words, Bothwell opened the pavilion door with a false key, and,
having groped his way up the stairs; he went to listen at Darnley's door.
Darnley, hearing no further noise, had ended by going to sleep; but he
slept with a jerky breathing which pointed to his agitation. Little
mattered it to Bothwell what kind of sleep it was, provided that he was
really in his room. He went down again in silence, then, as he had come
up, and taking a lantern from one of the conspirators, he went himself
into the lower room to see if everything was in order: this room was full
of barrels of powder, and a fuse ready prepared wanted but a spark to set
the whole on fire. Bothwell withdrew, then, to the end of the garden with
Balfour, David, Chambers, and three or four others, leaving one man to
ignite the fuse. In a moment this man rejoined them.

There ensued some minutes of anxiety, during which the five men looked at
one another in silence and as if afraid of themselves; then, seeing that
nothing exploded, Bothwell impatiently turned round to the engineer,
reproaching him for having, no doubt through fear, done his work badly.
He assured his master that he was certain everything was all right, and
as Bothwell, impatient, wanted to return to the house himself, to make
sure, he offered to go back and see how things stood. In fact, he went
back to the pavilion, and, putting his head through a kind of air-hole,
he saw the fuse, which was still burning. Some seconds afterwards,
Bothwell saw him come running back, making a sign that all was going
well; at the same moment a frightful report was heard, the pavilion was
blown to pieces, the town and the firth were lit up with a clearness
exceeding the brightest daylight; then everything fell back into night,
and the silence was broken only by the fall of stones and joists, which
came down as fast as hail in a hurricane.

Next day the body of the king was found in a garden in the neighbourhood:
it had been saved from the action of the fire by the mattresses on which
he was lying, and as, doubtless, in his terror he had merely thrown
himself on his bed wrapped in his dressing-gown and in his slippers, and
as he was found thus, without his slippers,