The touch of Murray on his shoulder, lightly as it fell, and grave as were the words of that high baron, aroused the reckless disposition of Bothwell almost to madness. “Thou liest, lord!” he shouted, in the fierce impulse of the moment--“thou liest, if thou dare to couple the name of guilt with Bothwell! Forego thy hold, or perish!”--and his dagger’s blade was seen slowly emerging from its sheath, while his clinched teeth and the starting veins of his broad forehead spoke volumes of the bitterness of his wrath. Another second, and blood, the blood of Scotland’s noblest, would have been poured forth like water, and in the presence of the queen; the destinies of a great kingdom would have perchance been altered, and the history of ages changed, all by the madness of a single moment. In the fearful crisis, a wild shriek was heard from the upper end of the hall, to which the ladies of the court had congregated, round the queen, like the songsters of spring when the dark pinions of the hawk are casting down a shadow of terror on their peaceful groves. “Help! help!--her grace is dying!” And, in truth, it did seem as though she were about to pass away. Better, a thousand times better, and happier, had it been for her, to have then died quietly in the palace of her forefathers, with the nobles of her land around her, than to have borne, for many an after-year, the chilling miseries which were showered by pitiless fortune on her head, till that most fatal hour of her tragic life arrived, and Mary was at length at rest! Murray relaxed his hold, turned on his heel, and strode abruptly to the elevated dais, on which the queen had sunk in worn-out nature’s weariness. For a minute’s space Bothwell glared on him as he strode away, like a tiger balked of his dear revenge. It was most evident he doubted--doubted whether he should set all, even now, upon a cast, strike down a foeman in the very fortress of his power, and if he must die, like the crushed wasp, sting home in dying. Prudence, however, conquered: he also turned upon his heel, and with a glance of the deepest scorn and hatred on the baffled lords, who, in the absence of their master-spirit, had lost all unison, stalked slowly through the portal of the hall, and disappeared. Before ten seconds had elapsed, the rapid clatter of hoofs, the jingling of mail, and the war-cry--“A Bothwell! ho! a Bothwell!” proclaimed that he had escaped the toils, and was surrounded by his faithful followers.