"That I will not tell," replied the man; "for I've been under obligations to him. But stranger," he continued, "as you would have the blessings of a dying man upon your head, you will--you will----" Here the speaker seemed on the point of expiring; and the king, perceiving this, and dreading that that event would take place before the dying man could make any further disclosures-- "I will what? I will what?" he said, eagerly and impatiently. "You will," resumed the wounded man, after a short interval, "repair to Falkland, and tell the king--the king--to beware of--of----" "Whom, whom, man?" again interrupted James, breathless with the feeling of intense interest that now possessed him--"whom, man, for a thousand pounds!" he exclaimed, forgetting, in his impatience and eager curiosity, his assumed character. Apparently heedless, however, or unobservant of the questioner's emotion, the dying man at length slowly added, "Of the Earl of Bothwell"--and expired. "Ha! Bothwell! Bothwell!" repeated James, now falling into a profound reverie; "ay, is he at these pranks? He shall be cared for, however. I warrant he plays no more of them. But it would seem," continued the king, musing, "that this impudent varlet, my counterpart, has stood me in good stead here, and, by mine honour, done me good service too. Had it not been for him, however unwittingly he may have thus come between me and danger, I must have been slain by these ruffians. I'll forgive the dog his impudence, after all. Nay, he deserves a reward, and he shall have it too." Having said this, or rather thought it, James resumed his journey; and we shall avail ourselves of the opportunity which this circumstance affords, to throw in a word or two, explanatory of the discontented spirit which had led to the attempt on the king's life above spoken of. James V., it is well known, though an amiable and generous prince, and possessed of many excellent qualities besides, was particularly obnoxious to his nobles, on account of his persevering and successful efforts to restrain and limit the exorbitant power which they had acquired during his minority, and which they showed no disposition to relinquish on his assuming the reins of government. With this political hostility, as it may be called, to his nobles, James, recollecting what he had suffered from them in his youth, mingled a feeling of bitter personal dislike; and the consequence was, an unrelenting and unremitting course of persecution on the one hand, and of impatient endurance on the other; and the attempt on the king's life, whose consequences our hero, Willie, had so opportunely averted, was one of the ebullitions of that treasonable spirit which this state of matters had engendered.