On October 7, or 8, or 9, Mary left Edinburgh to hold a Border session at Jedburgh. She appears to have been in Jedburgh by the 9th.[86] On October 7, Bothwell was severely wounded, in Liddesdale, by a Border thief. On October 15, Mary rode to visit him at Hermitage.[87] Moray, says Sir John Forster to Cecil (October 15), was with her, and other nobles. Yet Buchanan says that she rode ‘with such a company as no man of any honest degree would have adventured his life and his goods among them.’ Life, indeed, was not safe with the nobles, but how Buchanan errs! Du Croc, writing from Jedburgh on October 17, reports that Bothwell is out of danger: ‘the Queen is well pleased, his loss to her would have been great.’[88] Buchanan’s account of this affair is, that Mary heard at Borthwick of Bothwell’s wound, whereon ‘she flingeth away like a mad woman, by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of winter’ (early October!), ‘first to Melrose, then to Jedburgh. There, though she heard sure news of his life, yet her affection, impatient of delay, could not temper itself; but needs she must bewray her outrageous lust, and in an inconvenient time of the year, despising all incommodities of the way and weather, and all dangers of thieves, she betook herself headlong to her journey.’ The ‘Book of Articles’ merely says that, after hearing of Bothwell’s wound, she ‘took na kindly rest’ till she saw him--a prolonged _insomnia_. On returning to Jedburgh, she prepared for Bothwell’s arrival, and, when he was once brought thither, then perhaps by their excessive indulgence in their passion, Buchanan avers, Mary nearly died. All this is false. Mary stayed at least five days in Jedburgh before she rode to Hermitage, whither, says Nau, corroborated by Forster, Moray accompanied her. She fell ill on October 17, a week before Bothwell’s arrival at Jedburgh. On October 25, she was despaired of, and some thought she had passed away. Bothwell arrived, in a litter, about October 25. Forster says October 15, wrongly. These were no fit circumstances for ‘their old pastime,’ which they took ‘so openly, as they seemed to fear nothing more than lest their wickedness should be unknown.’ ‘I never saw her Majesty so much beloved, esteemed, and honoured,’ du Croc had written on October 17. [Illustration: House occupied by Queen Mary at Jedburgh. G. W. Wilson & Co. Aberdeen photo Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.]