lencairn, my grandfather's first and constant patron,
had been dead some time; but his son and successor, who knew the
estimation in which he had been held by his father, being then in
Edinburgh, allowed him, in consideration thereof, the privilege of his
hall. It suited not, however, with my grandfather's quiet and sanctified
nature to mingle much with the brawlers that used to hover there;
nevertheless, out of a respect to the Earl's hospitality, he did
occasionally go thither, and where, if he heard little to edify the
Christian heart, he learnt divers things anent the Queen and court that
made his fears and anxieties wax stronger and stronger.

It seemed to him, as he often was heard to say, that there was a better
knowledge of Queen Mary's true character and secret partialities among
those loose varlets than among their masters; and her marriage being
then in the parlance of the people, and much dread and fear rife with
the protestants that she would choose a papist for her husband, he was
surprised to hear many of the lewd knaves in Glencairn's hall speak
lightly of the respect she would have to the faith or spirituality of
the man she might prefer.

Among those wuddy worthies he fell in with his ancient adversary
Winterton, who, instead of harbouring any resentment for the trick he
played him in the Lord Boyd's castle, was rejoiced to see him again: he
himself was then in the service of David Rizzio, the fiddler, whom the
Queen some short time before had taken into her particular service.

This Rizzio was by birth an Italian of very low degree; a man of
crouched stature, and of an uncomely physiognomy, being yellow-skinned
and black-haired, with a beak-nose, and little quick eyes of a free and
familiar glance, but shrewd withal, and possessed of a pleasant way of
winning facetiously on the ladies, to the which his singular skill in
all manner of melodious music helped not a little; so that he had great
sway with them, and was then winning himself fast into the Queen's
favour, in which ambition, besides the natural instigations of his own
vanity, he was spirited on by certain powerful personages of the
papistical faction, who soon saw the great efficacy it would be of to
their cause, to have one who owed his rise to them constantly about the
Queen, and in the depths of all her personal correspondence with her
great friends abroad. But the subtle Italian, though still true to his
papal breeding, built upon the Qu