In a wild spot on the north-western slope of the castle rock, where the wall-flower and thistle flourished, and where at times the grass was spotted by the _witch-gowans_, those yellow flowers which are filled by pernicious sap, and are supposed to cause blindness, grew luxuriantly, they were all interred in one deep grave. In 1753, when the foundations of an arsenal were being dug there, some human remains were exhumed, with several coffin-handles, and three inscription-plates of pure gold. With these relics were found the skull and horns of a bull, thereby identifying them with those victims of misrule who perished on the vigil of St. Catharine, in 1440. CHAPTER XIV. THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF NOVEMBER. Playing at the tables, he There was murder'd. At his shrine Many a noble lady wept; Many a knight of valiant line: One mourn'd more than all the rest, Daughter of the Genovine. POETRY OF SPAIN. In the horror and bewilderment which were naturally excited by this terrible and unexpected catastrophe--this double execution which had taken place under his own eyes, and in which he felt himself thereby almost implicated, the unfortunate Captain of the King's Guard knew not what to do. How would the powerful and hostile Douglases, and how might Murielle view him _now_? He shrunk from the contemplation, and felt such an abhorrence of the regent and chancellor, that, although his bread and subsistence were derived from his post at court as Captain of the King's Guard, he was tempted to cast the office from him and leave the country. But to pass into exile was to lose all hope of Murielle, to relinquish her for ever; and he lived in an age when love was perhaps a more _concentrated_ passion than it may be even in one of greater civilization. To lure her with him into France,--in those old times the Scotsman's _other_ home,--would be fraught with danger; for the Douglases would have interest enough with Charles VII. to procure their separation, and his commitment for life to some obscure bastille, where he would never be heard of again,--if their emissaries did not cut him off in the light of open day. Then, on the other hand, his patron and friend, the late King James I., had made him promise to be a faithful subject and mentor to his son and heir; and, with one hand on that dead monarch's body as he lay murdered in the Black Friary at Perth, he had recorded the promise again in presence of his mourning widow.