hrough a
kind of air-hole, he saw the fuse, which was still burning. Some seconds
afterwards, Bothwell saw him come running back, making a sign that all
was going well; at the same moment a frightful report was heard, the
pavilion was blown to pieces, the town and the firth were lit up with
a clearness exceeding the brightest daylight; then everything fell back
into night, and the silence was broken only by the fall of stones and
joists, which came down as fast as hail in a hurricane.

Next day the body of the king was found in a garden in the
neighbourhood: it had been saved from the action of the fire by the
mattresses on which he was lying, and as, doubtless, in his terror he
had merely thrown himself on his bed wrapped in his dressing-gown and in
his slippers, and as he was found thus, without his slippers, which were
flung some paces away, it was believed that he had been first strangled,
then carried there; but the most probable version was that the murderers
simply relied upon powder--an auxiliary sufficiently powerful in itself
for them to have no fear it would fail them.

Was the queen an accomplice or not? No one has ever known save herself,
Bothwell, and God; but, yes or no, her conduct, imprudent this time
as always, gave the charge her enemies brought against her, if not
substance, at least an appearance of truth. Scarcely had she heard the
news than she gave orders that the body should be brought to her, and,
having had it stretched out upon a bench, she looked at it with more
curiosity than sadness; then the corpse, embalmed, was placed the same
evening, without pomp, by the side of Rizzio's.

Scottish ceremonial prescribes for the widows of kings retirement for
forty days in a room entirely closed to the light of day: on the twelfth
day Mary had the windows opened, and on the fifteenth set out with
Bothwell for Seaton, a country house situated five miles from the
capital, where the French ambassador, Ducroc, went in search of her,
and made her remonstrances which decided her to return to Edinburgh; but
instead of the cheers which usually greeted her coming, she was received
by an icy silence, and a solitary woman in the crowd called out, "God
treat her as she deserves!"

The names of the murderers were no secret to the people. Bothwell having
brought a splendid coat which was too large for him to a tailor,
asking him to remake it to his measure, the man recognised it as having
belonged to the king. "