Ralpho thanked his majesty, bowed, and drank off the cup without hesitation.
“Is it genuine, Ralpho?”
“I don’t know, your majesty; I think it tastes a little of the earth.”
The circle laughed at Ralpho’s remark; and the conversation began again to grow general, when, some time thereafter, Ralpho, who was bustling about, sat down in a languid and sickly posture on one of the window seats. They looked at him, and saw that his face was becoming black.
“What is the matter, Ralpho?” said one.
“I do not know what is the matter with me,” returned he; “I think I feel as if that wine were not like to agree with my stomach.”
He fell into immediate convulsions, and in ten minutes he was lying a swollen and disfigured corpse.
Douglas was the first to cry out treason. He bolted the door, and stood inside with his sword drawn, vowing that he would search the soul of every traitor in the room. Angus’s great power made the other lords to stand in awe of him; although it was obvious to them all, that he was at least as likely to have a hand in this as any other. Hume charged him boldly to his face with it, and made proffer to abide by the proof; but he pretended to receive the charge only with scorn and derision, as one which no reasonable man could suppose. The king was greatly affected, and, upon the whole, showed rather more apprehension on account of his personal safety, than was, perhaps, becoming in a sovereign. He cried out that “they were all of them traitors! and that he would rather be at the head of a band of moss-troopers, than be thus condemned to have such a set about him whom he could not trust.”
After some expostulation he acquitted the Earl of Angus, more, it was thought, through fear, than conviction of his innocence; but from an inference, the most natural in the world, he fixed the blame on the abbot.