"_My former speeches_ have but hit your thoughts, Which can interpret further; only, I say, Things have been strangely borne: the gracious Duncan Was pitied of Macbeth--marry he was dead. _And the right valiant Banquo walked too late; Whom, you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed, For Fleance fled._" Who told him all this about Banquo and Fleance? He speaks of it quite familiarly to the "other lord," as a thing well known in all its bearings. But not a soul but Macbeth, and the Three Murderers themselves, could possibly have known anything about it! As for Banquo, "Safe in a ditch he bides,"--and Fleance had fled. The body may, perhaps in a few days, be found, and, though "with twenty trenched gashes on its head," identified as Banquo's, and, in a few weeks, Fleance may turn up in Wales. Nay, the Three Murderers may confess. But now all is hush; and Lenox, unless endowed with second sight, or clairvoyance, could know nothing of the murder. Yet, from his way of speaking of it, one might imagine crowner's 'quest had sitten on the body--and the report been in the _Times_ between supper and that after-supper confab! I am overthrown--everted--subverted--the contradiction is flagrant--the impossibility monstrous--I swoon. BULLER. Water--water. NORTH. Thank you, Buller. That's revivifying--I see now all objects distinctly. Where was I? O, ay. The "other Lord" seems as warlock-wise as Lenox--for he looks forward to times when "We may again Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights; _Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives_." An allusion, beyond doubt, to the murder of Banquo! A sudden thought strikes me. Why, not only must the real, actual, spiritual, corporeal Ghost of Banquo _sate on the stool_, but "Lenox and the other Lord," as well as Macbeth, _saw him_. BULLER. Are you serious, sir? NORTH. So serious that I can scarcely hope to recover my usual spirits to-day. Have you, gentlemen, among you any more plausible solution to offer? All mum. One word more with you. Lenox tells the "other Lord" "From broad words, and 'cause he fail'd His presence at the tyrant's feast, I hear, MACDUFF LIVES IN DISGRACE; SIR, CAN YOU TELL WHERE HE BESTOWS HIMSELF?" And the "other Lord," who is wonderfully well informed for a person "strictly anonymous," replies that Macduff-- "Is gone to pray the holy king, (Edward) on his aid To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward." Nay, he minutely describes Macduff's surly reception of the King's messenger, sent to invite him to the Banquet, and the happy style of that official on getting the Thane of Fife's "absolute, Sir, not I," and D. I. O.! And the same nameless "Lord in waiting" says to Lenox, that "_this report Hath so exasperate the king, that he Prepares for some attempt of war_."