d these other gentlemen, and
Murray of Arbany, into the scheme. He had not even arranged that another
of his retinue should bring them from their futile hammer-work, to his
assistance, by another way.

For there _was_ another way. Young Ramsay was not with Lennox and the
rest, when they saw and heard the flushed and excited King cry out of the
window. Ramsay, he says, was further off than the rest; was at the
stable door: he heard and recognised James's voice, but saw nothing of
him, and distinguished no words. He ran into the front yard, through the
outer gate. Lennox and the rest had already vanished within the house.
Ramsay noticed the narrow door in the wall of the house, giving on the
quadrangle, and nearer him than the main door of entrance, to reach which
he must cross the quadrangle diagonally. He rushed into the narrow
doorway, ran up a dark corkscrew staircase, found a door at the top,
heard a struggling and din of men's feet within, 'dang open' the door,
_caught a glimpse of a man behind the King's back_, and saw James and the
Master 'wrestling together in each other's arms.'

James had the Master's head under his arm, the Master, 'almost upon his
knees,' had his hand on the King's face and mouth. 'Strike him low,'
cried the King, 'because he wears a secret mail doublet'--such as men
were wont to wear on a doubtful though apparently peaceful occasion, like
a Warden's Day on the Border. Ramsay threw down the King's falcon, which
he had taken from Murray and bore on his wrist, drew his dagger or
_couteau de chasse_, and struck the Master on the face and neck. The
King set his foot on the falcon's leash, and so held it. Ramsay might
have spared and seized the Master, instead of wounding him; James later
admitted _that_, but 'Man,' he said, 'I had neither God nor the Devil
before me, but my own defence.' Remember that hammers were thundering on
a door hard by, and that neither James nor Ramsay knew who knocked so
loud--enemies or friends.

The King then, says Ramsay, pushed the wounded Master down the steep
narrow staircase up which the young man had run. The man of whom Ramsay
had caught a glimpse, standing behind the King, had vanished like a
wraith. Ramsay went to a window, looked out, and, seeing Sir Thomas
Erskine, cried, 'Come up to the top of the staircase.'

Where was Erskine, and what was he doing? He had not followed Lennox and
Mar in their rush back into the house. On hearing James's