"I could scarcely do so after. Read it thyself!" replied Bothwell; "for Huntly and I have nothing now in common!"
Each tore open a letter, and began slowly and laboriously to decipher the cramped and contracted hand-writing so common to the sixteenth century. The effect of these communications was very different on the readers. A bright smile spread over the broad visage of the Knight of Ormiston; while a frown, black as a thunder-cloud, gathered on the dark brow of Bothwell.
"Fury!" he exclaimed, crushing up the letter. "God's fury, and his malison to boot! be on this white-livered dog—this foul traitor"——
"Who—who?"
"Frederick"——
"How—the King of Denmark and Norway! These are hard names for his majesty to receive within his own fortress of Bergen. What tidings?"
"He declines all further correspondence with me concerning the Shetland Isles, and threatens, that if by the vigil of Saint Denis—now but three days hence—we are found within the Danish seas, to send me captive to Queen Mary, with a full account of my mock embassy. 'Tis some machination of my foeman, Murray."
"Devil burn him!" said Hob. "Well, is it not better, after all, to be Lord of Bothwell and Hailes, at home in puir auld Scotland, than Prince of Orkney and Lord of Hialtland, branded as a traitor till the very name of Hepburn becomes (like that of Menteath of old) a byword and a scoff in every Scottish mouth—banned alike in the baron's hall and at the peasant's hearth—while thou wouldst writhe hourly to free thy head from under the sure claws of the Danish lion."
"Right, Hob! Throw his letter into the sea, and, if thou art clerk enough, let us hear what our noble friend, the Lord Huntly, sayeth."
Ormiston read as follows:—