"When I remember the love of this young king for me, and how he placed a coronet on my head, I feel something of remorse when men speak as thou, Sir James, hast spoken."
"My lord," retorted the fiery baron, "in this desperate game, the man who feels remorse is lost!"
"Alas! I fear me it is but too true."
"Remorse!" added Gray; "pshaw! 'tis but weakness of mind and narrowness of soul!"
Lord Drummond made an impatient step forward, but Angus grasped his arm.
"Knight of Kyneff," said he, with a reddening brow and quivering lip, "I can afford to pardon this rashness of speech, which a younger man and soldier would be compelled to resent. I am an old man now, sirs, but while this dear Scotland of ours required my sword, it was never allowed to rest in its scabbard; and if it is for the good of the people, whose natural head are the nobles, I will unsheath it against a corrupt court, as readily as against our hereditary foemen of England or elsewhere."
"In this hast thou spoken well; for by one grand stroke must this corrupt court be swept away!" said the Earl of Angus, who as yet had not spoken much, but in whose breast was concentrated all the pride of feudal nobility, and the memory of a lofty ancestry, whose origin was lost in the dark ages of Scottish antiquity, and whose military glory was incorporated with the past history of the nation. "My lords and gentlemen, I will appeal to you, whether it is not an intolerable thing that I, who am lieutenant-general of the kingdom, must receive orders and edicts from this new-fangled Duke of Montrose, whose ancestry were but Lairds of Crawford and Glenesk when mine were Earls of Douglas and Lords supreme of Galloway?—men who, since the days when Sholto the Swarthy won the Dale of Douglas by his valour, have been foremost in every field that is honourable to Scotland,—men who bore on their shields the red lion of the Galwegii at the battles of Largs, Theba, and Northallerton, and whose war cry, six hundred years ago, found a terrible echo in the ranks of the Longobardi! I will rather die, as many of them have died, on the red field of battle, than stoop their honoured crest to this ignoble yoke! Aid me to drive these tawdry courtiers into England or the sea, and I will make thee, Drummond, Great Chamberlain of Scotland."
"It would appear to me," said Sir James Shaw, who was blinking over another pot of wine, "that thou, my Lord Hailes, art bettor fitted for the office of treasurer than yonder old Saracen, Knollis, the Prior of Rhodez."
"Yes, and we shall make his pood friend Home lord privy seal, in lieu of that old foutre the Provost of Lincluden," added Sir Patrick Gray, half in jest.
"Accept my thanks, sirs," replied Home; "but are there no pretty places you could choose for yourselves?"