"Oh say, gentle sir, what can we do for you," said Mysie. "Command us--we are at your bidding." "Then get me a priest, that I may confess." "There is none nearer than Cambuskenneth or St. Ninian's Kirk," said Gawain, taking his walking-staff and dagger; "yet I can soon reach either; but may we ask your name, sir?" "My gudeman, this day, at morn, I was YOUR KING," said James, with a hollow voice and sorrowful emphasis, as he sank back on the coarse box-bed. Gawain stood as one terrified and confounded on hearing this; but Mysie, his wife, burst into tears, and wringing her hands in great fear and excitement, ran out upon the roadway as she heard hoofs approaching. "A priest," she cried, "a priest, for God's love and sweet St. Mary's sake: a priest to confess the king!" "To confess whom say ye?" cried the headmost of four armed horsemen, who, with helmets open and swords drawn, galloped up to her in the glooming. "The king, the king, gude sirs--our puir and sakeless king!" "And where is he, gudewife?" "Lying in our pair bed--here, in here, ayont the hallan in my gudeman's mill. Oh, sirs, for a priest!" "Hush, woman, I am a priest," said the first, who was no other than _Sir_ Hew Borthwick, with a glance of infernal import to his three companions, as he leaped from his horse; "lead me to the king." Borthwick entered the lonely mill, and his three companions, who were no other than Sir Patrick Gray of Kyneff, Sir William Stirling of Keir, and Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, after fastening their horses to the hedge without, followed him beyond the _hallan_, or wooden partition which formed the inner apartment. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE REGICIDES. "Upon desolate Aros there is wailing and weeping, For the chief of her lords in the dark chamber sleeping; In the dark chamber sleepeth our curly-tressed warrior, In the day of the battle our bulwark and barrier." _Lament for Maclean of Aros._ The poor miller was inexpressibly alarmed on perceiving the four armed knights enter; the richness of their armour and accoutrements impressed him still more, and he hastened to say, in an explanatory manner-- "His horse threw him at our door--a wicked horse, sirs;--we have done a' we could--on my life, sirs, I assure you--my gude wife and I--that the horse----" "Enough, enough, fellow," said Sir Patrick Gray, gruffly. "Stir up that fire, for this den of thine is as dark as a dungeon. Let us see where _this_ king of ours is lying." Though shocked and startled by the bearing of his visitors, Gawain hastened to throw a quantity of fir-apples on the fire, where they blazed and crackled and diffused a brilliant light throughout the humble apartment, and the highly polished-suit of the ruffians shone like silver as they stooped over the bed of the hapless and helpless king, who was "covered by a coarse checked rug," and on whom they gazed with eyes as pitiless in expression as their hearts were in feeling.