At this point the crafty eyes of Crichton the Chancellor were turned full upon the speaker.  His hand tugged nervously at his thin reddish beard as if it had been combing the long goat’s tuft which grew beneath his smooth chin.

“But did not you yourself come all the way from France to endue him with the duchy of Touraine?” he said.  “Doth that look like pulling him down from his high seat?”

The marshal moved a politic hand as if asking silence till he had finished his explanation.

“Pardon,” he said; “permit me yet a moment, most High Chancellor—­but have you heard so little of the skill and craft of Louis, our most notable Dauphin, that you know not how he ever embraces men with the left arm whilst he pierces them with the dagger in his right?”

The Chancellor nodded appreciation.  It was a detail of statecraft well known to him, and much practised by his house in all periods of their history.

“Now, my lords,” the ambassador continued, “you are here all three—­the men who need most to end this tyranny—­you, my Lord of Avondale, will you deign to deliver your mind upon this matter?”

The fat Earl hemmed and hawed, clearing his throat to gain time, and knitting and unknitting his fingers over his stomach.

“Being a near kinsman,” he said at last, “it is not seemly that I should say aught against the Earl of Douglas; but this I do know—­there will be no peace in Scotland till that young man and his brother are both cut off.”

The Chancellor and de Retz exchanged glances.  The anxiety of the next-of-kin to the title of Earl of Douglas for the peace and prosperity of the realm seemed to strike them both as exceedingly natural in the circumstances.

“And now, Sir Alexander, what say you?” asked the Sieur de Retz, turning to the King’s guardian, who had been caressing the curls of his beard with his white and signeted hand.

“I agree,” he replied in a courtly tone, “that in the interests of the King and of the noble lady whose care for her child hath led her to such sacrifices, we ought to put a limit to the pride and insolence of this youth!”

The Chancellor bent over a parchment to hide a smile at the sacrifices which the Queen Mother had made for her son.

“It is indeed, doubtless,” said Sir William Crichton, “a sacrifice that the King and his mother should dwell so long within this Castle of Stirling, exposed to every rude blast from off these barren Grampians.  Let her bring him to the mild and equable climate of Edinburgh, which, as I am sure your Excellency must have observed, is peculiarly suited to the rearing of such tender plants.”

He appealed to the Sieur de Retz.

The marshal bowed and answered immediately, “Indeed, it reminds me of the sunniest and most favoured parts of my native France.”

The tutor of the King looked somewhat uncomfortable at the suggestion and shook his head.  He had no idea of putting the King of Scots within the power of his arch enemy in the strong fortress of Edinburgh.