"There, fostered by this heretic prince, they have become the enemies of their fatherland, the believers of a false doctrine, the rebels of their king and the accursed of their God. None has done more than the Lord Ashkirk to further a marriage between King James and a daughter of the mansworn Tudor; but happily, I have ever been victorious; for the honour and policy of Scotland and France require that they must league together against the grasping ambition and centralizing greed of England. Thou knowest that I have ever been for France, and bear about as much love for England as a tiger doth to a panther. When Henry offered his daughter to James, with the office of lieutenant-general of all England and Ireland, happily, I warned him of the gilded snare, and dismissed the ambassador, Howard, with a remembrance of how England had treated the shipwrecked James I. When Godscallo came from the Emperor Charles to offer his sister Mary of Austria as a queen for Scotland, who defeated him, and turned his dangerous eloquence against himself?" "Your eminence," said Redhall, putting the left leg over the right. "When he offered Donna Maria of Portugal, the daughter of Eleonora of Austria," resumed Beaton, with a smile of gratified vanity, "and boasted of her beauty and the sixty battles of her victorious uncle, who waived all his sophistry by a word?" "Your eminence of course," sighed Redhall. "When Christian II. of Denmark offered his daughter, the Princess Dorothea, though she was already contracted to the beggarly Elector Frederick, I dismissed him, and briefly too; for my whole soul was bent on preserving the ancient league of amity, that together the banners of Scotland and France might be turned against their common enemy; and by my own energy, assisted by God and our Blessed Lady, I had the young Queen Magdalene espoused to James; and NOW let the Douglases do their worst, for, ratified before the holy altar of Notre Dame de Paris, that alliance can never be broken!" "Death will break it," said the advocate, revengefully, for he was somewhat irritated by this long preamble. "Magdalene is dying by inches, and there are abroad such rumours of sorcery in the matter that I crave a warrant to seize----" "Whom?" asked Beaton, with a terrible glance. "The Countess of Ashkirk and her daughter, the Lady Jane Seton," said Redhall, with a sinking heart. "Margaret of Ashkirk?" said the cardinal, with a look of blank astonishment, "the widow of the good Earl John? Beware thee, my lord, lest zeal outrun discretion. Her husband was a stout knight and true to Scotland." "As I tell your eminence that his widow is an ill-woman and false! Her son, the outlawed earl, hath again re-entered Scotland by the Middle Marches." "Thou dost not say so?" "Sure as I live and breathe." "On what errand?"