The plan of the conspirators was to put the bags of gunpowder into a cask which they had provided for the occasion, to keep the mass together, and increase the force of the explosion. The cask had been provided, and placed in the gardens behind the house; but, on attempting to take it into the house, they found it too big to pass through the back door. This caused considerable delay; and Bothwell, growing impatient, came, with his characteristic impetuosity, to ascertain the cause. By his presence and his energy, he soon remedied the difficulty in some way or other, and completed the arrangements. The gunpowder was all deposited; the men were dismissed, except two who were left to watch, and who were locked up with the gunpowder in Mary's room; and then, all things being ready for the explosion as soon as Mary should be gone, Bothwell walked up to Darnley's room above, and joined the party who were supping there. The cool effrontery of this proceeding has scarcely a parallel in the annals of crime. At eleven o'clock Mary rose to go, saying she must return to the palace to take part, as she had promised to do, in the celebration of her servants' wedding. Mary took leave of her husband in a very affectionate manner, and went away in company with Bothwell and the other nobles. Her enemies maintain that she was privy to all the arrangements which had been made, and that she did not go into her own apartment below, knowing very well what was there. But even if we imagine that Mary was aware of the general plan of destroying her husband, and was secretly pleased with it, as almost any royal personage that ever lived, under such circumstances, would be, we need not admit that she was acquainted with the details of the mode by which the plan was to be put in execution. The most that we can suppose such a man as Bothwell would have communicated to her, would be some dark and obscure intimations of his design, made in order to satisfy himself that she would not really oppose it. To ask her, woman as she was, to take any part in such a deed, or to communicate to her beforehand any of the details of the arrangement, would have been an act of littleness and meanness which such magnanimous monsters as Bothwell are seldom guilty of. Besides, Mary remarked that evening, in Darnley's room, in the course of conversation, that it was just about a year since Rizzio's death. On entering her palace, too, at Holyrood, that night, she met one of Bothwell's servants who had been carrying the bags, and, perceiving the smell of gunpowder, she asked him what it meant. Now Mary was not the brazen-faced sort of woman to speak of such things at such a time if she was really in the councils of the conspirators. The only question seems to be, therefore, not whether she was a party to the actual deed of murder, but only whether she was aware of, and consenting to, the general design.