“He was just going to quarters, sir,” said his comrade; “he has had a bad fall.” “In a fray, I suppose?” said Grahame. “If you neglect duty in this way, your royal blood will hardly protect you.” “How have I neglected duty?” said Bothwell, sulkily. “You should have been at quarters, Sergeant Bothwell,” replied the officer; “you have lost a golden opportunity. Here are news come that the Archbishop of St Andrews has been strangely and foully assassinated by a body of the rebel whigs, who pursued and stopped his carriage on Magus-Muir, near the town of St Andrews, dragged him out, and dispatched him with their swords and daggers.” [Note: The general account of this act of assassination is to be found in all histories of the period. A more particular narrative may be found in the words of one of the actors, James Russell, in the Appendix to Kirkton’s History of the Church of Scotland, published by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esquire. 4to, Edinburgh, 1817.] All stood aghast at the intelligence. “Here are their descriptions,” continued the Cornet, pulling out a proclamation, “the reward of a thousand merks is on each of their heads.” “The test, the test, and the qualification!” said Bothwell to Halliday; “I know the meaning now--Zounds, that we should not have stopt him! Go saddle our horses, Halliday.--Was there one of the men, Cornet, very stout and square-made, double-chested, thin in the flanks, hawk-nosed?” “Stay, stay,” said Cornet Grahame, “let me look at the paper.--Hackston of Rathillet, tall, thin, black-haired.” “That is not my man,” said Bothwell. “John Balfour, called Burley, aquiline nose, red-haired, five feet eight inches in height”--“It is he--it is the very man!” said Bothwell,--“skellies fearfully with one eye?” “Right,” continued Grahame, “rode a strong black horse, taken from the primate at the time of the murder.” “The very man,” exclaimed Bothwell, “and the very horse! he was in this room not a quarter of an hour since.” A few hasty enquiries tended still more to confirm the opinion, that the reserved and stern stranger was Balfour of Burley, the actual commander of the band of assassins, who, in the fury of misguided zeal, had murdered the primate, whom they accidentally met, as they were searching for another person against whom they bore enmity. [Note: One Carmichael, sheriff-depute in Fife, who had been active in enforcing the penal measures against non-conformists. He was on the moors hunting, but receiving accidental information that a party was out in quest of him, he returned home, and escaped the fate designed for him, which befell his patron the Archbishop.] In their excited imagination the casual rencounter had the appearance of a providential interference, and they put to death the archbishop, with circumstances of great and cold-blooded cruelty, under the belief, that the Lord, as they expressed it, had delivered him into their hands.