"Decide, decide," said Angus, whose anger was increasing every moment; "banishment to such evil councillors as Montrose, and death to all ignoble favourites--or death to the peers of Scotland; and here, at the foot of that throne for which I and ten generations of my house have often shed the Douglas blood, I throw down the gage of battle!" With these daring words Angus drew the steel gauntlet from his right hand, hurled it at the foot of the throne, and withdrew, followed by Drummond, Hailes, Home, Gray, and others, who led the bewildered Duke of Rothesay away with them. The young Lord Lindesay, and his father the venerable Montrose, both sprang forward to pick the gauntlet up, but the latter was successful, and both these loyal nobles, with several others who loved and pitied the king, followed him to his private cabinet, to which he immediately withdrew. "Said I not that I would put all Scotland in a flame?" whispered Borthwick to Sauchie, as he put his foot in the stirrup to mount at the palace gate. "Yea, and verily thou shalt have, as I promised, three of my best tenements in Stirling, by deed of a notary's hand," replied the Laird of Sauchie. Abercrombie the Benedictine, William Dunbar the poet, and other literary men, were left behind in the hall. The angry altercation had somewhat scared them, but they could not resist an expression of pleasure at the prospect of their enemies, the military nobles, confronting each other on the field of battle. "I would not, for a king's ransom, be in the boots of him who penned this specious forgery!" said the chief of our ancient poets, in his East Lothian patois. "Ay, Willie Dunbar," said Father Abercrombie, "with the nobles it proposed to slay their eldest sons--no bad hint." "Why, this would make our poor king a heathen, like the Jews of old," replied Dunbar. "Yea, and it reminds me of a passage in the first act of the _Electra_ of Sophocles." "You remember of the pagan emperor, who amused himself catching flies?" said the translator of Sallust, laughing. "I warrant you, Brother Barclay," replied Dunbar, "the king will find these carles increase like unto so many wasps. But hint not that, even in jest, our blessed king conceived a thought so vile as that banquet of blood." "Alas!" said the young poet Henrison, sorrowfully, "who among us can foresee the end of all this? Life is unstable as sunshine on the water." "Yes, my good master of arts," replied Barclay, "it is even our friend Dunbar sings in his sweet Lament-- "Our pleasaunce here is all vane glory, This false world is but transitory: The flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee-- _Timor mortis conturbat me!_"