At last, after many inquiries, I heard how the Minister of Edinburgh had bearded the King, so that he was gone off to Linlithgow in great indignation, and how that in a day or two Maister Robert Bruce would either be King of Scotland or lay his head on the block.
Yet the minister was in his study chamber when I went to seek him, reading of his Bible and writing his sermon, as quietly as though there had been no King in Scotland—save, as it might be, the King in whose interest he had so often bearded King Jamie Stuart, sixth of that name.
Robert Bruce looked up when he saw me.
'Ah, Launcelot,' he cried, more heartily than ever I had heard him, 'ken ye, lad, that you are likely to be at the horn for communing with a wild rebel like me?'
'To be "at the horn" is no uncommon thing in Carrick,' I replied, 'and makes little difference either to the length of a man's life or the soundness of his sleep. I have been at the horn ever since I was eighteen years of my age.'
'Well, Launcelot,' he said soberly, 'so it has turned out even as I said. I know—I know. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. But I saw ye were all "fey" at Culzean.'
Then I told him the purpose of my coming all the way to Edinburgh to see him.
'What!' he said, 'ye have never come so far only to have speech of poor Robert Bruce, that was yesterday Minister of Edinburgh, and to-day is, I fear, doomed to lay his head on the hag-clog?'
I told him it was even so, and that, being the man of wisest counsel I had ever known, I would have gone ten times as far to have his friendly advice.
'Ay me,' he said sadly, 'wae is the man that has such a rumour and report of wisdom, yet cannot counsel himself what he should do in his own utter need.'