Armstrong drew the back of his hand across his brow.

"I seem to remember him," he said, "but cannot tell where I have met him."

"Perhaps this third man will quicken your memory," and the cobbler came forward, dressed as he had been the night he was captured.

Armstrong gasped, and a greenish pallor overspread his face.

[Illustration: "THE FORTY-ONE TREES BORE THEIR BURDEN."]

"What is your answer, Armstrong?" asked the king.

"I and my forty men will serve your majesty faithfully in your army if you grant us our lives."

"No thieves ride with any of Scotland's brigade, Armstrong."

"I will load your stoutest horse with gold until he cannot walk, if you spare our lives."

"The revenues of Scotland are sufficient as they are, Armstrong,"

replied the king.

"Harry of England will be glad to hear that the King of Scotland has destroyed twoscore of his stoutest warriors."

"The King of England is my relative, and I shall be happy to please him. The defence of Scotland is my care, and I have honest men enough in my army to see that it is secure. Have you anything further to say, Armstrong?"

"It is folly to seek grace at a graceless face. If we are for the tree, then to the tree with us. But if you make this fair forest bear such woeful fruit, you shall see the day when you shall die for lack of stout hearts like ours to follow you, as sure as this day is the fatal thirteenth."

The forty-one trees bore their burden, and thirteen years from that time the outlaw's prophecy was fulfilled.

THE KING'S GOLD

It is strange to record that the first serious difficulty which James encountered with the nobles who supported him, arose not over a question of State, but through the machinations of a foreign mountebank. The issue came to a point where, if the king had proceeded to punish the intriguer, his majesty might have stood alone while the lords of his court would have ranged themselves in support of the charlatan--a most serious state of things, the like of which has before now overturned a throne. In dealing with this unexpected crisis, the young king acted with a wisdom scarcely to be expected from his years. He directed the nobility as a skilful rider manages a mettlesome horse, sparing curb and spur when the use of the one might have unseated him, or the use of the other resulted in a frenzied bolt. Thus the judicious horseman keeps his saddle, yet arrives at the destination he has marked out from the beginning.

In the dusk of the evening, James went down the high street of Stirling, keeping close to the wall as was his custom when about to pay a visit to his friend the cobbler, for although several members of the court knew that he had a liking for low company, the king was well aware of the haughty disdain with which the nobles regarded those of the mechanical or trading classes. So he thought it best not to run counter to a prejudice so deeply rooted, and for this reason he restricted the knowledge of his visits to a few of his more intimate friends.

As the king was about to turn out of the main street he ran suddenly into the arms of a man coming from the shop of a clothier who made costumes for the court. As each started back from the unexpected encounter, the light from the mercer's shop window lit up the face of his majesty's opponent, and the latter saw that he had before him his old friend, Sir David Lyndsay.

"Ha, Davie!" cried the king, "it's surely late in the day to choose the colours for a new jacket."

"Indeed your majesty is in the right," replied Sir David, "but I was not selecting cloth; I was merely enacting the part of an honest man, and liquidating a reckoning of long standing."

"What, a poet with money!" exclaimed the king. "Who ever heard of such a thing? Man Davie, you might share the knowledge of your treasure-house with a friend. Kings are always in want of money.

Is your gold mine rich enough for two?"

The king spoke jocularly, placing no particular meaning upon his words, and if Sir David had answered in kind, James would doubtless have thought no more about the matter, but the poet stammered and showed such evident confusion that his majesty's quick suspicions were at once aroused. He remembered that of late a change had come over the court. Scottish nobles were too poor to be lavish in dress, and frequently the somewhat meagre state of their wardrobe had furnished a subject for jest on the part of ambassadors from France or Spain. But when other foreigners less privileged than an ambassador had ventured to make the same theme one for mirth, they speedily found there was no joke in Scottish steel, which was ever at an opponent's service, even if gold were not. So those who were wise and fond of life, became careful not to make invidious comparisons between the gallants of Edinburgh and Stirling, and those of Paris and Madrid. But of late the court at Stirling had blossomed out in fine array, and although this grandeur had attracted the notice of the king and pleased him, he had given no thought to the origin of the new splendour.

The king instantly changed his mind regarding his visit to the cobbler, linked arm with the poet, and together they went up the street. This sudden reversion of direction gave the royal wanderer a new theme for thought and surmise. It seemed as if all the town was on the move, acting as surreptitiously as he himself had done a few moments previously. At first he imagined he had been followed, and the suspicion angered him. In the gloom he was unable to recognise any of the wayfarers, and each seemed anxious to avoid detection, passing hurriedly or slipping quietly down some less frequented alley or lane.

Certain of the figures appeared familiar, but none stopped to question the king.

"Davie," cried James, pausing in the middle of the street, "you make a very poor conspirator."

"Indeed, your majesty," replied the poet earnestly, "no one is less of a conspirator than I."

"Davie, you are hiding something from me."

"That I am not, your majesty. I am quite ready to answer truly any question your majesty cares to ask."

"The trouble is, Davie, that my majesty has not yet got a clue which will lead to shrewd questioning, but as a beginning, I ask you, what is the meaning of all this court stir in the old town of Stirling?"

"How should I know, your majesty?" asked the poet in evident distress.

"There now, Davie, there now! The very first question I propound gets an evasive answer. The man who did not know would have replied that he did not. I dislike being juggled with, and for the first time in my life, Sir David Lyndsay, I am angered with you."

The knight was visibly perturbed, but at last he answered,--

"In this matter I am sworn to secrecy."

"All secrets reveal themselves at the king's command," replied James sternly. "Speak out; speak fully, and speak quickly."

"There is no guilt in the secret, your majesty. I doubt if any of your court would hesitate to tell you all, were it not that they fear ridicule, which is a thing a Scottish noble is loth to put up with whether from the king or commoner."

"Get on, and waste not so much time in the introduction," said his majesty shortly.

"Well, there came some time since to Stirling, an Italian chemist, who took up his abode and set up his shop in the abandoned refectory of the old Monastery. He is the author of many wonderful inventions, but none interests the court so much as the compounding of pure gold in a crucible from the ordinary earth of the fields."

"I can well believe that," cried the king. "I have some stout fighters in my court who fear neither man nor devil in battle, yet who would stand with mouth agape before a juggler's tent. But surely, Davie, you, who have been to the colleges, and have read much from learned books, are not such a fool as to be deluded by that ancient fallacy, the transmutation of any other metals into gold?"

Sir David laughed uneasily.

"I did not say I believed it, your majesty, still, a man must place some credence in what his eye sees done, as well as in what he reads from books; and after all, the proof of the cudgel is the rap on the head. I have beheld the contest, beginning with an empty pot and ending with a bar of gold."

"Doubtless. I have seen a juggler swallow hot iron, but I have never believed it went down his throttle, although it appeared to have done so. Did you get any share of the transmuted gold? That's the practical test, my Davie."

"That is exactly the test your barons applied. I doubt if their nobilities would take much interest in a scientific experiment were there no profit at the end of it. Each man entering the laboratory pays what he pleases to the money taker at the table, but it must not be less than one gold bonnet-piece. When all have entered, the doors are closed and locked. The amount of money collected is weighed against small bars of gold which the alchemist places in the opposite scale until the two are equally balanced. This bar of gold he then throws into the crucible."

"Oh, he puts gold into the crucible, does he? Where then is the profit? I thought these necromancers made gold from iron."

"Signor Farini's method is different, your majesty. He asserts that like attracts like, and that the gold in the crucible will take to itself the minute unseen particles which he believes exists in all soils; the intense heat burning away the dross and leaving the refined gold."

"I see; and how ends this experiment?"

"The residue is cooled and weighed. Sometimes it is double the amount of gold put in, sometimes treble; and I have known him upon occasion take from the crucible quadruple the gold of the bar, but never have I known a melting fall below double the amount collected by the man at the table. At the final act each noble has returned to him double or treble the gold he relinquished on entering."

"Where then arises the profit to your Italian? I never knew these foreigners to work for nothing."