The green sides of the silent hills and rocky brows of those basaltic cliffs, which seem but the half of some vast mountain which volcanic throes have rent and torn asunder, were bathed in the splendour of the broad and cloudless moon; the palace towers and vanes stood forth in strong white light, while the curtain walls and cloistered courts were steeped in sable shadow. On the right were a cluster of small antique houses where some of the royal retainers dwelt, and where Roland had his temporary domicile. This was called St. Anne's Yard; on the left, apparently among the hills, two red lights were shining. One was from an ancient mansion at the foot of Salisbury craigs, where Robert, abbot of the Holy Cross, dwelt; the other was from the illuminated shrine of St. Antony's Hermitage. Several revellers were lounging on the green sward in the moonlight, or sitting on the carved stone benches that were placed against the palace wall, and the lovers took possession of the most remote, where the south garden of the king bordered the burial-ground of the abbey. "Jane," said Roland, as he gazed fondly on her pure brow and snowy skin, which seemed so dazzlingly white in the clear moonlight; "your smiles to-night have done more to raise the Douglas cause than twenty thousand lances. How my heart leaps! I seem to tread on air! I knew well that James had but to see you, to appreciate your worth and beauty. He has done so; and now old dame Margaret of Arran, and all the Hamiltons of Cadyow and Clydesdale, will be ready to burst their boddices and die of sheer vexation." "But if Archibald should be discovered----" "Chut! dost think that James would dance with the sister over-night and decapitate the brother in the morning?" "The king never once referred to the frightful position in which he is placed." "He is much too courtly to do so. But say, art thou not happy, dearest?" "Happy? with a proclamation on this palace-gate offering a thousand merks for my brother's head! Oh, Roland, Roland! I would justly merit contempt to be so. I came not hither to rejoice, or with any other intention than to beg his life and pardon from the king. The figures of a dance were certainly not the place to prefer such a solemn request--Mother of God! no; and, as my mother says, but with a different meaning, I am yet biding my time. My heart sickens at the splendour of that glittering hall, when I bethink me that the gallant earl, my brother, whose plume should have waved among the loftiest there, is now the companion of lacqueys and liverymen--the retainers of our actual enemies and oppressors--the butt, perhaps, of their coarse mirth and ribald jests, and fearing to repel them with the spirit he possesses, lest he should be discovered and unmasked by those whose innate hatred of the Seton and the Douglas require not the additional incentive of King James's gold."