Morton listened to all this intently, with slow-travelling eyes which followed the rafters from their spring in one wall to their cobwebbed end in the other. He could find no flaw at first, nor put his finger upon the damnable blot there must be in it; but after a time, as he figured it over and over, he missed somebody. ‘Stop there! stop there, you Ruthven!’ he thundered. ‘Tell me this: Where will Lethington be the while?’
He was told, ‘Gone to meet the Earl of Moray.’ Moray!—his jaw fell.
‘What! will Moray no be with me?’
They said, it was much hoped. But the roads were heavy; there was a possibility——
He jeered at them. Did they not know Moray yet? ‘Man,’ he said, turning to Archie, ‘it’s not a possibility, it’s as certain as the Day of Doom.’
Then they all talked at once. Moray’s name was fast to a letter; the letter was fast in Lethington’s poke; Lethington was fast to the band. What more could be done? Would Lethington endanger his neck? His safety was Moray’s, and theirs was Lethington’s. And the King? What of the King?
‘You talk of Doomsday, my lord!’ shouts Ruthven, with the slaver of his rage upon his mouth: ‘there’s but one doom impending, and we’ll see to it.’
Perorations had no effect upon Morton, who was still bothered. He went over the whole again, clawing down his fingers as he numbered the points. There was himself to keep the palace, there was Lindsay to hold back Bothwell; the King to go into the closet—the kiss—the words of signal—then Ruthven and——Here he stopped, and his eyes grew small.
‘Oh, sirs,’ he said, ‘the poor lassie! Sold with a kiss! She’s big, sirs; you’ll likely kill mother and bairn.’