Soon after the entrance of James III. the bells ceased to toll, and the ship guns ceased firing; the wine and ale still poured at intervals from the stone spouts of the Cross; but the acclamations died away in the Nethergaitt, and soon a stillness reigned around the small but crowded residence of the king. A stranger could not have imagined that a monarch and a court were there--so ominous was the silence in that grim old Scottish palace; for James mourned over the caprices of his nobles and the insults he had endured from them, during his nine months' captivity in the Castle of Edinburgh, from which he was not released until Richard III. of England interfered in his behalf, at the head of 30,000 men. Young Rothesay mourned over domestic troubles, and a secret marriage which he dared not yet avow; while a crowd of cunning favourites on one hand, and of ambitious nobles on the other, watched like lynxes for the turning of any scale that would prove of advantage to themselves. Discontent was apparent everywhere in and about the court of James III. It was visible in the face of the king, for the recent slaughter of his courtiers by Angus and others, against whom he was nursing secret plans of vengeance; it was visible in the stern eyes of the noblesse, who, by a royal edict, had been desired to forbear wearing swords within the royal precincts--an order which they observed by arming themselves to the teeth, and doubling the number of their mail-clad followers; it was visible in the faces of the merchants, _anent_ the twenty-one years' quarrel with Flanders; and in the faces of the people, because they saw a disastrous struggle approaching between the feudal nobles and themselves--a struggle which the field of battle alone would decide for their future good or evil. That evening the king gave a banquet to his false courtiers, ad to Admiral Wood, to Barton, and Falconer. Lord Drummond was grand carver, Angus grand cupbearer, and the Laird of Kyneff grand sewer, or _asseour_; but Rothesay stole at an early period from the table, and reached his own apartments unperceived. There be exchanged dresses with his faithful Lord Lindesay of the Byres; and putting on a mask, with a shirt of mail of the finest texture under his doublet, issued by a private gate into the main street, just as the last shadows of the mountain that overhangs Dundee were fading away upon the river--or rather becoming blended with the general obscurity of the summer gloaming. The young prince wore a casquetel, and had his sword and dagger under the scarlet cloak of Lord Lindesay, for whom he was mistaken by the pages, yeomen, and archers, in the neighbourhood of the palace, as he passed into the burgh.