this house there suddenly arose the tragic figure of an avenger whose
brief but terrible career occupies but a single page in history, yet
contains all the elements of a fatal drama. Sir Robert Graham, of whose
antecedents there is little record, was not the head of the house, but a
younger brother of daring character, and one of those fanatics of race
to whom the glory of their house is a religion. The first we hear of him
is a sudden appearance in the Parliament of January 1435, when he made a
fiery and violent speech, ending by an impeachment of the King himself
for injustice and robbery. Such an assault would find little support in
the public assembly of the States, in the awe of the royal presence, and
Graham had to escape for his life, finding means of flight into the
Highlands, the ever-ready refuge for rebels. There he launched wild
threats against James, which the King, probably well accustomed to
missiles of the kind, paid little attention to. The monarch was warned
too, we are told, by another wild apparition, which suddenly appears out
of the mists for this purpose--a Highland witch of the order of those
who drove Macbeth's ambition to frenzy, but whose mission now was to
warn James of the mischief brewing against him. The King was brave and
careless, used to the continual presence of danger, keeping his
Christmas merrily at Perth with all the sports and entertainments with
which it was possible to cheat the gloomy weather, and made little but
additional mirth both of the prophecy and the threats. Evidently the
Court found pleasure in the fair city on the Tay. They were still
lingering there, having taken up their residence in the monastery of the
Black Friars, at the end of February. In Scotland as elsewhere the great
religious houses seem to have been the best adapted to give hospitality
to kings. It was long after this date before anything that could be
called an independent royal residence was built at Holyrood itself: for
generations the King and Court were but guests in the stately abbey,
which was, like the monastery of the Black Friars, so convenient and
commodious a house both for entertainment and shelter that its great
chambers became the natural, as they were the most stately and pleasant,
lodging that could be provided for a monarch.

The tragedy that followed is well known. At the end of a pleasant
evening when there had been music--in which James himself was the first
connoisseur in Scotland,