"I know them already," said the king, gloomily. "Like the Countess of Arran, thou wouldest say that she is under a spell?" "Which nothing but a counter-spell can break." "Mother of God!" said the king, "I cannot believe in such things! Lord cardinal, dost thou?" "And what manner of charm, deacon?" asked the cardinal, affecting not to hear the king; for he did not scoff at sorcery, though he did at Paracelsus. "A muild, as our peasants call it. She may have trod upon a muild, which is a powder of potent effect, prepared from the bones of the dead, and scattered by sorcerers in the path of their enemies. We all know that, at the Sabaoth of the witches, sepulchres are violated, corpses are dismembered, and the limy particles of the bones pulverised to operate as mischiefs upon mankind. At this time the queen hath all the symptoms of one who hath trod upon an enchanted muild, or dieth of pricked images--for they are the same. A swarting of the heart, a fluttering of the breast. When the patients will merely sicken they turn red--when they will die, they turn pale." "And the queen is pale?" said the cardinal. "Yea, even as death." "The cure--the cure?" sighed the king. "There are two: the first is, to find a certain reptile, forming one of the six species of salamanders which are indigenous in southern Europe, in the head whereof is a red stone, to be taken as a powder. For it is written by Paracelsus----" "Paracelsus again!" said James, stamping his foot; "the second cure?" "Is to burn the sorcerer." "Then Sir Adam Otterburn must sift this matter to its bottom." "Ah, that reminds me," said the doctor, rising up, and clutching his sand-glass; "I must now retire, with your majesty's leave." "To visit Sir Adam? I knew not that he ailed." "A sword-thrust." "From whom?" "Sir Roland Vipont." "Vipont again!" said James V., knitting his brows; "thus it is my friends are ever slaying each other. But he, my most valiant and true friend, has been quite besotted by those Setons of Ashkirk." "He knew not of their arrest," said the cardinal; "it was a sudden rencontre--a quarrel." "Oh, in that case, I have nothing to do with such little amusements. The Countess of Ashkirk?" "Is in Barncleugh's ward at Inchkeith." "Where I will keep her as long as James I. kept Euphemia of Ross on Inchcolin. An old intriguing limmer! And the Lady Jane?" "Hath escaped to--no one knows where." "Poor damsel! I feel some compunction for her, and fear that she hath been sorely misled by that deep old Douglas her mother. And then the earl?" "Hath vanished too." "To England?" "Most probably." "But is Redhall's wound severe!" asked James. The cardinal turned to the doctor. "A fair run through the body, at the shoulder," said the physician. "'Twas well for him that Mercury, which influences the lungs, was not in Abdevinam, or the lord advocate's gown had been vacant."