And Lennox, prinking and preening him like a gay-feathered Indian bird in my lady’s bower, read the King’s mandate over again. John Mure watched his son with the eye of a crouching wild cat. The younger man was about to utter something, when his father said quickly to Lennox, ’I pray thee, my Lord Duke, may I speak with you a moment apart? I am the first to accept the offer!’ And with that they came both of them to the side of the scaffold where I was on guard, leaving James Mure standing with drooping head by the block. ’Hark ye, my lord,’ said Auchendrayne the elder, ’thy master’s terms are fair enough to be offered to a dying man on the scaffold. I will take them. But on condition that my son be executed before I reveal the secret. For there are but two of us left, and we have been close to one another all our lives. I would not, therefore, have my son think that I, being an old man, for the sake of a year or two of longer life, would reveal those matters for which he has already suffered the torture of the extreme question, with so great constancy both in the King’s inquest chamber and before the Lords of Secret Council.’ ’That is easily arranged,’ said Lennox, dusting at his doublet. ’I have but to give the word to the executioner, and he will do his duty first upon your son. Then he will halt till you have accepted the King’s mercy, and given pledge and earnest of full revelations concerning these hidden and mysterious matters.’ This was Lennox’s customary manner of speaking—as he had learned it in the English Court, with womanish conceits and a flood of words and gestures. And as he spoke he smiled upon John Mure, as though the old grey man in the cloak and reverend beard had been some young and easy-virtued dame of the Court. And so taken up with himself was he, that he did not observe the basilisk look which the arch-conspirator turned upon him. Lennox held up his hand to the executioner. ’In the King’s name,’ he cried to the man in the mask, ’do thine office upon the younger first, and speedily.’ ’These are not my orders!’ quoth he in the mask, curtly. Lennox flashed a little ebon staff, with a golden crown set upon the summit, before his eyes. ’Would’st thou argie-bargie with me?’ he said, ’then right soon another shall take thy bishopric and (as thou dost others) shalt shepherd thee to Hades.’ Whereat Marjorie, robed in her clear-shining white, took the hand of James Mure, the man that was about to die. ’Husband,’ said she, calmly, ’I have asked pardon for thee from God—do thou also ask it now, ere swift death take thee. Ask it both from God and man.’