At the hour of seven, the king, Douglas, and their retinue sat down to a banquet, or rere-supper, in the castle-hall. It was sumptuous, and what it lacked in genuine hilarity was made up in rude and antique splendour. At that banquet friends and foes seemed united for the time--though like Scotsmen in general, the moment it was over, and while the hall yet echoed with the flourish of trumpets as the king rose, they drew into cliques and coteries, who talked and scowled at each other. The king, Crichton, and Livingstone earnestly desired a compromise and coalition with Douglas. On one hand the latter wished to scare them by a display of his power, and on the other to fathom their ulterior plans without revealing his own; thus during the banquet he carefully avoided the perilous subject of his rebellious _bond_. Gray, as he leaned on his partizan, at the back of the king's chair, kept the visor of his helmet half closed, to conceal the emotions of his heart, which his face might have betrayed. Not even the image of Murielle, pale, gentle, and sad-eyed, could soften at that time the bitterness that burned within him. His long separation from her; his wounds inflicted by the hands of the earl and his followers; his many wrongs; the snares of Achanna; the long captivity in the Flemish castle of Bommel; his kinsman's murder, and the terrors of that desperate flight from Thrave, all swelled up like a flood of fiery thoughts within him, and he actually conceived the idea of smiting Douglas on the face with his iron glove in the king's presence, and challenging him to mortal combat in the hall. Night had set in--a dark and gusty night of February, when the wind howled loudly and drearily round the towers of Stirling, and when the moon cast its fitful gleams with the shadows of the fast-flying clouds, on the wide vale of Forth, and the mighty masses of the Ochil Mountains. The pages were lighting the sconces and chandeliers in the great hall, while the yeomen of the cellars were supplying the guests with more wine, when James, impatient to broach the subject of the bond, privately invited the earl to accompany him into a closet, which is still shown in the north-western corner of the castle--the same quarter of the royal residence in which he first saw the light. In golden letters, on its cornice, may yet be seen his name: Jacobus II. Rex Scottorum. Its walls were then covered with gilded Spanish leather; a fire of perfumed wood burned cheerfully on the hearth; but the poker and tongs, though each surmounted by an imperial crown, were chained to the jambs, as if in the house of a simple citizen.