"Never!" cried the fiery youth; "I applaud your conduct, and could recommend to you some more work of the same kind; for my father has got another court of mechanics. Scarcely a nobleman is allowed to approach him. The Archbishop of St Andrew's, Schevez, has not forgotten his rudiments of astrology he learned from Spernicus at Louvaine--for the teaching of the king keeps up his own knowledge; and Cochrane, Rogers, Hemmil, Torphichen, Leonard, and Preston, whom you so beautifully suspended over the old bridge, have been replaced by others, no less elevated in their birth, and no less learned in the arts. My father is lost. Scotland is ruled by the stars. The birth of every year hath its horoscope. Chivalry declineth in the land. The glory of the Bruce is forgotten. There is much work before me, and I wish it were well begun, for I cannot doubt that by your services it will be well ended." "Thou speakest like the wisdom of the oldest of us," said Gray; "and I am urged, by some of the concluding words of thy speech, to put a question to your highness--yet I tremble at my own boldness." "Speak, good Gray," said the prince; "my father will not pardon you and your associates, after your work of good service is finished--I will pardon thee before thou beginnest." "Is it the opinion of your highness," said the wily baron, "that a king who is ruled by the stars (the _moon_ as a _fixed_ one not excepted) is fit to govern this kingdom, which has heretofore obeyed the statutes of parliament and the sword of the knight?" "Upon the honour of my order of knighthood," cried the prince, "thy question goeth home into the heart and marrow of the matter, and my answer shall not be behind it: I opine not." "And doth not the situation in which we stand," said Hume--"we, the greater number of the nobles in the land, liable every instant to forfeit our lives to an aspect of the heavens--to be hanged for hanging the favourites of the king five years ago--render it imperative on us to seek, in the spirited and knightly heir-apparent, a substitute for him who is declared unfit to rule, without danger to the country and ruin to us?" "Assuredly," answered the flattered prince. "If the king is not deposed, you will be deposed, and I shall be scandalised by the sight of a star-gazing king, and a host of dangling nobles at the end of ropes not so fine as the silk cords of Cochrane the mason's tent, which he requested for the special convenience of his noble craig. What will ye?" "That thou shouldst head our party," said Gray, "and be our king in place of thy father, who is unfit to govern this kingdom, and unwilling to pardon his friends." "I object not," replied the prince. "The king, my father, can be cared for tenderly. Let him be sent to my palace of Rothsay, where he can gaze on the heavens from sunset to sunrise, and send me daily an astrological express, to enable me to govern the kingdom by this heavenly wisdom."