"very royally," thinking if it were
possible "with good deeds to withdraw him from his attempt that he
purposed to do." After supper the King took his rebellious subject
aside, into another room opening from that in which they had supped, and
which is still exhibited in Stirling Castle to the curious stranger, and
once more reasoned with him on his conduct. No private matter would seem
to have been introduced, the treasonable league which the Earl had made
with Crawford and Ross, rebels against the lawful authority of the
kingdom, being the subject on which James put forth all his strength of
argument. Douglas, Pitscottie tells us, answered "verrie proudlie," and
the argument grew hot between the two men, of whom one had always
hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was
probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so
obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult
to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of
Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald
not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False
traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him with ane
knyf." "And they said," adds this chronicle with grim significance,
"that Patrick Gray straik him next the King with ane pole ax on the
hed." The other companions crowded round, giving each his stroke. And
thus within a short space of years the second Earl of Douglas was killed
in a royal castle, while under a royal safe-conduct, at a climax of
hopeless discord and antagonism from which there seemed no issue. The
exasperation of the King, the dead-lock of all authority, the absolutely
impracticable point at which the two almost equal powers had arrived,
account for, though they do not excuse, such a breach of faith. I prefer
to believe that James had at least no decided purpose in his mind, but
hoped in his own power to induce Douglas to relinquish these alliances
which were incompatible with his allegiance; but that the sudden
exasperation with which he became convinced of his own powerlessness to
move him brought about in a moment the fatal issue (with who knows what
sudden wild stimulus of recollection from the murder of which he had
been a witness in his childhood?) which statesmen less impulsive had
already determined upon as necessary, though probably not in this sudden
way.

[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL, AN