"What seek you?" asked the Queen, pausing.
"Charity;—my gudeman died on Flodden Hill wi' his four sons and his three brethren."
"My poor woman," said Mary of Lorraine, detaching a purse from her girdle, and placing it in the hand of the mendicant, "then we have each lost a husband for Scotland."
The Countess of Yarrow led the little Queen Mary by the left hand.
The Regent Arran gave his right hand, ungloved, to her mother; their suites formed in procession; and, while the trumpets sounded shrill and high, they ascended to the hall, between ranks of pikemen and arquebusiers facing inwards.
The bells continued to toll; still the populace without shouted their acclaim; still the iron culverins and brass moyennes thundered in smoke and flame from the massive bastions and arched loopholes, wreathing the grey turrets with fleecy vapour, and waking the distant echoes of the Torwood and the Abbey Craig; while, that nothing might be wanting to swell the combination of noises, two old lions, pets and favourites of the late King James, to whom they had been sent by the Emperor Charles V., roused angrily from their lethargic noonday dose, were pawing, prancing, and bellowing in that small court, which, from their presence there, is yet named the Lions' Den.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CONVENTION OF ESTATES.
Oh, gentlemen of Scotland! oh, chevaliers of France!
How each and all had grasp'd his sword and seized his angry lance,
If lady-love, or sister dear, or nearer, dearer bride,
Had been like me, your friendless queen, insulted and belied!
Bon Gaultier.
This meeting took place in that magnificent hall which was built by James III. for banquets and the meeting of parliament. It is one hundred and twenty feet long; and to the taste for architecture, which led him to embellish it in a style of the most florid beauty (long since destroyed by the utilitarian barbarism of the Board of Ordnance), with his love for painting, poetry, music, and sculpture, he owed much of that malignity which embittered his short life, and ultimately led to his fatal and terrible end in the adjacent field of Sauchieburn.