brought Angus to Edinburgh, where with his party he had been sometimes master and sometimes proscribed man in the innumerable variations of politics or rather of personal quarrels and intrigues. Albany had by this time returned to France without however resigning his regency, and authority was more or less represented by the Earl of Arran, who was at the head of the opposite faction. The party of Arran were in possession of Edinburgh and of the little King, now eight years old, who was in the castle under charge of the peers who had been appointed his guardians, when Angus reappeared. Queen Margaret amid all these tumults, finding little encouragement from her brother, who was much more intent on securing a party in Scotland than on consulting her wishes, had also chosen to reside near her boy in the comparative safety of that stronghold. Accordingly when Earl Angus came to attend the Parliament he was confronted by his adversaries in possession of the town and of the castle, with his wife, the most violent adversary of all, in the fortress shut up from his access or approach. He was accompanied, Pitscottie tells us, "with all his kin and friends to the number of five hundred spears, weill accompanied and arrayed." But the city was hostile, and perhaps something in the sombre air of all about awakened the suspicions of the Douglases, especially as the gates were hastily shut behind them and more than usual precautions taken. Awakened thus to a sense of alarm, the threatened party sent scouts out into the streets during the night, to find out what mischief was brewing. While the humbler spies pursued their inquiries by wynd and changehouse, Maister Gawin Douglas, the bishop, went out to see what he could discover of the real state of affairs--if it was true that the westland lords had held a secret meeting and resolved that Angus should not leave Edinburgh now that he had put himself in their power--and "if he could find any gude way betwixt the two parties." In pursuance of this anxious quest he went in search of Archbishop James Beatoun, his brother of St. Andrews, whom he found in the church of the Black Friars, assisting, it is to be presumed, at some evening service. "The said Mr. Gawin desired him to take some pains to labour betwixt this two parties which was at ane sharp point, and meaning little less than that the bishop had most part the wyte (blame) thereof. But the bishop assured him again with ane oath, chopping on his breast, saying, 'By my conscience, my lord, I know not the matter.' But when Mr. Gawin heard the bishop's purgation, and chopping on his breast, and perceived the plates of his jack clattering, he thought the bishop deceaved him, so Mr. Gawin said to him, 'My lord, your conscience is not good, for I hear it clattering.'" [Illustration: REID'S CLOSE, CANONGATE]