"Well, then, I would humbly ask your majesty," continued Ramsay, remembering the instructions he had received, "whether you are aware that during the whole time the earl was in Paris, he was in continual connexion with the English ambassador, Sir Henry Neville, seeing him every day, and that he only thought fit to wait upon your majesty's ambassador once?" "Ay, did he so?" said James, musing. "He may find that he cannot lightly his own born sovereign without scathe. How got ye knowledge of this, man? You've no been in Paris yourself, unless you can be in two places at once." "I had a cousin there at the time, your majesty, and he tells me that the thing was commonly remarked and talked about. Then I understand that her majesty, the Queen of England, showed somewhat more honour and grace to this Earl of Gowrie than one of your majesty's subjects should willingly have received." "Ay, poor fellow, he couldn't help that," said the king, with a curious grin at his own affectation of candour. "If our good titty and aunt, Queen Elizabeth, like the other wild jade, Fortune, will thrust honours upon a man who does not want them, he must take them as they come. But what did she do that was worthy of mark?" John Ramsay, in reply, recapitulated all that his cousin had told him; and, more from James's manner than any words that escaped him, judged the communication gave the monarch a slight uneasiness. The king, as was common with him when internally agitated, hurried his sort of limping pace into the thicker wood, pulling the sides of his breeches at the same time, and mumbling inward comments, of which not one word could be distinctly heard. Then sitting down on a broad stone bench, which stood at the side of the avenue, near a spot where a lateral alley branched off, he impatiently bade his companion go on, although the young man was already speaking as fast as he could. "The only thing more I have heard, sire," said John Ramsay, who had by this time well-nigh finished his tale, "is that the earl was in constant communication, and that of a secret kind, with Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Lord Cobham." "The devil is in those fellows," said the king, abruptly. "They betray every one, first their own mistress, and then their own friend. They've softened all down to me; but I saw through them, lad, even before what you have told me. They could not blind my eyes so as to prevent my finding out that there was more under their fine speeches.--But you've got something else to say, Jock. I see it in your face, man.--Out with it!" "It was only this, your majesty," replied the young man, "and I don't know, indeed, whether it is necessary to say it, for your wisdom needs no guidance; but the fact is, all the information I have received, comes from my cousin Newburn." "None the worse for that, man, I dare say," said the king. "Why should not your cousin Newburn tell truth, as well as another, Jock Ramshackle?"