Nor need we describe the fiendish exultation and savage conduct of the assassins toward a sick, defenceless woman. "Machiavelli," remarks Mr. Hosack, "never conceived--he has certainly not described--a plot more devilish in its designs than that which was devised ostensibly for the death of Riccio, but in reality for the destruction both of Mary Stuart and her husband." For two days the noble assassins appeared to have been entirely successful. Riccio was killed, the parliament was dissolved, the banished lords recalled, and the queen a prisoner. But her amazing spirit and resolution scattered all their plans to the winds. The poor fool Darnley began to see the treachery of the men who had made him their tool, and Mary fully opened his eyes to his danger. At midnight on the Tuesday after the murder, the queen and Darnley crept down through a secret passage to the cemetery of the royal chapel of Holyrood and made their way "through the charnel house, among the bones and skulls of the ancient kings," to where horses and a small escort stood waiting for them. Twenty miles away Mary galloped to Dunbar, where, within three days, eight thousand border spears assembled to defend her. The assassins, Morton, Ruthven, and their associates, fled to England, where, under Elizabeth's wing, they were of course safe. Maitland went to the Highlands, and Knox, grieving deeply over the discomfiture of his friends, took his departure for the west. The complicity of Murray, "The head of many a felon plot, But never once the arm," was not known, and he was pardoned his rebellion, and again received by Mary into her confidence. This is the Murray constantly referred to by Mr. Froude in his History of England as "the noble Murray," "the stainless Murray"--a man who, for systematic, thorough-going villainy and treachery has not his superior in history. Darnley, with an audacity and recklessness of consequences which seem hardly compatible with sanity, made a solemn declaration to the effect that he was wholly innocent of the late murderous plot. The indignation of his associates in the crime knew no bounds. He alone, they said, had caused the failure of the enterprise; he had deserted them, and now sought to purchase his safety in their ruin. From that moment his fate was sealed. Buchanan's famous lie concerning Mary's visit to the Castle of Alloa, which, to his shame, Mr. Froude substantially repeats, is disposed of effectually in a few words by Mr. Hosack. The ride from Jedburg, too, as recounted by Buchanan in his own peculiar style, repeated by Robertson and by Froude, as far as he dares, in the teeth of the testimony on the subject, also receives its _quietus_ at Mr. Hosack's hands.