"No public letter can protect a man from the punishment due to private treason!"
Then, says history, "as this last reply of James implied a threat of personal violence, the native pride of Douglas betrayed him into the most imprudent passion. He broke into a torrent of reproaches, upbraiding the king for depriving him of the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, declared that he cared little for the name of treason, with which his conduct had been branded; that, as to his confederacy with the earls of Ross and Crawford, he had it not in his own power to dissolve it, and that if he had, he would be sorry to offend his best friends to gratify the boyish caprices of a king. James, naturally fiery and impetuous, became furious with rage at this rude defiance, uttered in his own palace by one whom he regarded as his enemy." He drew his dagger, and, animated by a gust of temper far beyond his control, exclaimed, "False traitor! if thou wilt not break the bond, THIS SHALL!"
With these words he drove the weapon into the earl's breast—the keen and glittering blade passing between his cuirass and the gold espalette at his left armpit. Choking in blood, the fierce and fearless earl fell back for an instant. Then, maddened by pain, and perhaps by the prospect of immediate death, he unsheathed his own poniard, and was rushing upon James, when—as we are told by Buchanan—Gray interposed and struck him down by a blow on the head with his partisan. "This for MacLellan!" he exclaimed, in a hoarse voice.
"Villain!" sighed the earl, as he sank on the rush-covered floor, and struggled vainly to rise again.
"I struck but to save my king, lord earl," said Gray, bending over him, "and for no private wrong of my own, nathless my words, so Heaven be my judge! but say, shall Murielle, my wife, be surrendered to me?"
The earl gave Gray a ghastly smile as the blood flowed darkly over his bright armour, and a livid pallor overspread his swarthy face.
"Speak, I conjure you," urged Gray; "speak, ere it be too late—Murielle—"
"Shall never be thine," muttered the dying earl, with quivering lips and uncertain accents; "for when this news reaches Thrave, Achanna—James Achanna—has—has my orders—orders to—to——"
"What?" implored Gray, bending low his ear; "what?"——"To strangle her!"
These terrible words were scarcely uttered, when many who were the earl's enemies rushed in with their swords and daggers, and, holding back the king, Gray, Crichton, and Glendinning, who—now that their first gust of fury was over, would have saved him—speedily ended his life by the infliction of six-and-twenty wounds.