"Perhaps; but even with all the altar-offerings, lesser tithes, pasque presents, and dues for baptism, marriage, and funerals, there is but little left to give after the yearly expenses of so great a monastery are paid."
"There spoke a brother abbot, and not a treasurer," said the king laughing, while the churchman coloured as he tied up his rolls with a ribbon. "Laus Deo! I am thankful we have come to an end; but we shall need all the money we can collect, my lord."
"True; for evil tidings are on the wind," said Lord Glammis, approaching a single pace and pausing.
"Of what—or whom?" asked James, with a louring eye.
"The Douglases again."
Sir Patrick Gray started from his reverie to listen.
"What of them now?" asked the king impatiently.
"Sir Alan Lauder and a man named James Achanna, both followers of the earl, have slain a king's vassal within the Holy Gyrth of Lesmahago."
"Treason! But that is a mere nothing now," said James bitterly.
"And worse than treason, for it is sacrilege!" added the abbot of Melrose, with gathering wrath. "When your highness's sainted ancestor, King David I., in the pious times of old, granted that cell unto the monks of Kelso, he wrote, that 'whoso escaping peril of life and limb flies to the said cell, or cometh within the four crosses around it, in reverence to God and St. Machute, I grant him my firm peace.'"