Paris then devotes a page and a half to an account of a walk, and of his reflections. On Friday, Bothwell met him, asked him for the key, and said that _Sunday_ was the day for the explosion. Now, in fact, _Saturday_ had been fixed upon, as Tala declared.[166] Paris took another walk, thought of looking for a ship to escape in, but compromised matters by saying his prayers. On Saturday, after dinner, Bothwell again asked for the key: adding that Balfour had already given him a complete set of false keys, and that they two had passed a whole night in examining the house. So Paris stole the key, though Bothwell had told him that he need not, if he had not the heart for it. After he gave it to Bothwell, Marguerite (Carwood?) sent him back for a coverlet of fur: Sandy Durham asked him for the key, and he referred Sandy to the _huissier_, Archibald Beaton. This Sandy is said in the Lennox MSS. to have been warned by Mary to leave the house. He was later arrested, but does not seem to have been punished. On Sunday morning, Paris heard that Moray had left Edinburgh, and said within himself, ‘O Monsieur de Moray, you are indeed a worthy man!’ The wretch wished, of course, to ingratiate himself with Moray, but his want of tact must have made that worthy man wince. Indeed Paris’s tactless disclosures about Moray, who ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and did sneak off, may be one of the excellent reasons which prevented Cecil from adding Paris’s deposition, when he was asked for it, to the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection.’[167] When the Queen was at supper, on the night of the crime, with Argyll (it really was with the Bishop of Argyll) and was washing her hands after supper, Paris came in. She asked Paris whether he had brought the fur coverlet from Kirk o’ Field. Bothwell then took Paris out, and they acted as in the depositions of Powrie and the rest, introducing the powder. Bothwell rebuked Tala and Bowton for making so much noise, which was heard above, as they stored the powder in Mary’s room. Paris next accompanied Bothwell to Darnley’s room, and Argyll, silently, gave him a caressing dig in the ribs. After some loose babble, Paris ends, ‘And that is all I know about the matter.’ This deposition was made ‘without constraint or interrogation.’ But it was necessary that he should know more about the matter. Next day he was _interrogué_, doubtless in the boot or the pilniewinks, or under threat of these. He _must_ incriminate the Queen. He gave evidence now as to carrying a letter (probably Letter II. is intended) to Bothwell, from Mary at Glasgow, in January, 1567. His story may be true, as we shall see, if the dates put in by the accusers are incorrect: and if another set of dates, which we shall suggest, are correct.