On the earl's train disappearing among the wooded hollows which lay between the city and the furzy slope of Braid and Liberton, the captain of the guard and his kinsman the lieutenant, with their esquires, pages, and lacqueys passed forth from the castle, to swell the retinue of the chief magistrate of the city, Sir Thomas Cranston of that ilk, baron of Denholm and Stobs, warden of the marches, and one of the conservators of peace upon the borders, for the steel-gloved provosts of those stirring times were men of a different metal from the men of words, who "twaddle" in the same place in this age of steam and electricity. As they passed out, the king's master butcher entered the gateway of the fortress, accompanied by a peddie or foot-boy, bearing a covered bundle upon a trencher. This covered bundle contained a _black bull's head_. "See you _that_, Sir Alexander?" said the Chancellor, twitching the furred sleeve of his compatriot. "The black bull's head!" said the other, with an irrepressible shudder. "Yes; for the banquet to-morrow." "Holy Dame!" "It is the fatal signal, to be placed on the table the moment the king rises." "The king! Oh, Chancellor," said the Regent, in a voice that turned almost to a groan, "after all I have urged, mean you that he, poor boy, shall share the odium of our act--a deed at which one half of Scotland, and perhaps all France, may cry aloud?" "Let them cry; the _end_ shall sanctify the means. With Douglas in his grave, the great seal will be firmer in my hands, the sceptre lighter in yours, and the crown shall shine the brighter on the head of him whose father was wronged and slain by such as Douglas in the Black Friary at Perth." "I pray God all may end as you predict," said the Regent, doubtfully; "but yet I shudder when contemplating this lure--this snare; the mock banquet, the mock tribunal, and the bloody lykewake of the morrow." That night, after dusk, four coffins were secretly conveyed up the rock, and through the west postern of the castle, by James Achanna and other "muffled" or masked men, and these were concealed in the chancellor's private closet, the door of which opened off the great hall of David's tower. These coffins were covered with crimson velvet and had nails, handles, and plates of gold, or at least of richly gilt work. The first had the name of the most potent prince William, sixth earl of Douglas, third duke of Touraine, lord of Longoville, Galloway, Annandale, and Liddesdale, _qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_, in his seventeenth year. The second coffin bore the name of his younger brother, Lord David, _qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_. The third bore the name of his countess, Margaret Douglas, so famed for her beauty as the Fair Maid of Galloway, _qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_, in her eighteenth year. The fourth bore the name of his sister, Lady Murielle Douglas, two years younger, with the same fatal inscription, _qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_.