"So say I," added Angus, with a bitter laugh.
"All who dare aver that the king wrote such a letter to me," continued Montrose, "or that such was the intention of our state banquet at Edinburgh, lie foully in their throats, and are false cravens! Let us betake us to our swords at once, for the sword alone can wrest a charter for the people's liberty from this subtle and tyrannical nobility."
"Duke," said James, "liberty is the inherent right of the people. They give us prerogatives, but it is not in the power of princes to give a people what they possess by right of inheritance—liberty."
"Montrose, thou sayest well," said Angus, who did not understand the hint conveyed by the king's reply; "the sword, the sword, so be it then," he added, with lofty pride and stern joy; "and with God's blessing, let the battle field decide whether this kingdom of Scotland shall be governed by its hereditary peers or the parasites of a king. James II. slew two earls of my house; one was murdered in the castle of Edinburgh in the midst of a friendly feast, another was stabbed to the heart by a dagger in the Castle of Stirling—stabbed by the royal hand, and then was flung over the chamber window upon the rocks below, like the body of a slaughtered hound rather than the corse of William Douglas, Duke of Touraine, and Lord Supreme of Galloway. I shall be wary how your father's son adds a third to the number."
Angus glared with hatred at Montrose, who was the first subject in Scotland after the little Duke of Ross, being the first of the nobility who attained a ducal coronet, a distinction quite sufficient to gain him the enmity of all the earls of the Douglas faction.
"Oh, Angus," said James, reproachfully, "thou art a fierce subject, in whose lawless heart uncurbed ambition rages like a devouring flame; but wouldst thou have thy king to stoop to thee?"
"And why not, if that king hath erred?" asked the earl, bluntly.
"God be the judge between us," said James, raising upwards his hands and tearful eyes.
"Decide, decide," said Angus, whose anger was increasing every moment; "banishment to such evil councillors as Montrose, and death to all ignoble favourites—or death to the peers of Scotland; and here, at the foot of that throne for which I and ten generations of my house have often shed the Douglas blood, I throw down the gage of battle!"
With these daring words Angus drew the steel gauntlet from his right hand, hurled it at the foot of the throne, and withdrew, followed by Drummond, Hailes, Home, Gray, and others, who led the bewildered Duke of Rothesay away with them. The young Lord Lindesay, and his father the venerable Montrose, both sprang forward to pick the gauntlet up, but the latter was successful, and both these loyal nobles, with several others who loved and pitied the king, followed him to his private cabinet, to which he immediately withdrew.