Then the royal standard, the yellow banner with the red lion rampant, was hoisted at the mainmast-head, to indicate that the king was on board. On this appearing, a commotion was observable immediately on board the _Margaret_, which lay a bowshot further up the river; her drum was beaten and her barge's crew piped away, to bring old Sir Alexander Mathieson, "the King of the Sea," on board the Admiral, while all her port-lids were triced up, and the cannon run out. The salutes of the two great ships, which fired each a hundred guns, announced to the people of Dundee and of the opposite coast, that the king was on board. Hence arose that rumour, which proved perhaps so fatal to the interests of James--_that he had abdicated_, and was going with Admiral Wood to Holland or Flanders. Circulated industriously by the highborn enemies of the throne, the report spread like wildfire, and though there were no means of travelling in those days but on foot or on horseback, it was known with many strange additions at the cross of the metropolis on the following day, and it gave a great impetus to the bad cause of the malcontent nobles. CHAPTER XXIV. DAVID FALCONER. "Then on my mind a shadow fell, And evil hopes grew rife; The damning thought stuck in my heart, And cut me like a knife,-- That she whom all my days I loved Should be another's wife!" _Summer and Winter Hours_ With the last words of Barton ringing in his ears and rousing a voice of reproach in his heart, Lord Drummond flung aside his velvet cloak and descended into the garden, which was at the back of the mansion, and lay between it and the margin of the river. Some remembrance of happier, and perhaps of less ambitious days came over his memory; he felt something of remorse for having so ruthlessly delivered over his daughter's plighted husband to the violence of his enemies; but as he had no wish either to alter the deadly cast of the die, or to hear the clashing of the assassins' swords in the street without, he walked through the garden hurriedly and muttered-- "I have done wrong--I have acted ignobly, and not as Robert Barton would have done by me, or to the meanest in Scotland! Yet I did not tell him to love my daughter Effie--and Home and Hailes shall both be earls, if swords and lances can make them so. Yet--yet--tush! I have behaved like an old wolf. But there was no remedy--I had betrayed too much to him; so cold steel must seal his lips for ever. And yet, alack! those lips have often been upon poor Effie's cheek. No--no--let me not think of it!----But who is this? A captain of the king's arquebussiers--and Sybilla too;--pest! here is another lover!"