• And what I say next I partly saw
• And partly I heard in sooth,
• And partly since from the murderers' lips
• The torture wrung the truth.

• For now again came the armèd tread,
• And fast through the hall it fell;
• But the throng was less; and ere I saw,
• By the voice without I could tell
• That Robert Stuart had come with them
• 650Who knew that chamber well.

• And over the space the Græme strode dark
• With his mantle round him flung;
• And in his eye was a flaming light
• But not a word on his tongue.

• And Stuart held a torch to the floor,
• And he found the thing he sought;
• And they slashed the plank away with their swords;
• And O God! I fainted not!

• And the traitor held his torch in the gap,
• 660All smoking and smouldering;
• And through the vapour and fire, beneath
• In the dark crypt's narrow ring,
• With a shout that pealed to the room's high roof
• They saw their naked King.

• Half naked he stood, but stood as one
• Who yet could do and dare:
• With the crown, the King was stript away,—
• The Knight was reft of his battle-array,—
• But still the Man was there.

• 670From the rout then stepped a villain forth,—
• Sir John Hall was his name;
• With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault
• Beneath the torchlight-flame.

• Of his person and stature was the King
• A man right manly strong,
• And mightily by the shoulder-blades
• His foe to his feet he flung.

• Then the traitor's brother, Sir Thomas Hall,
• Sprang down to work his worst;
• 680And the King caught the second man by the neck
• And flung him above the first.

• And he smote and trampled them under him;
• And a long month thence they bare
• All black their throats with the grip of his hands
• When the hangman's hand came there.

• And sore he strove to have had their knives,
• But the sharp blades gashed his hands.
• Oh James! so armed, thou hadst battled there
• Till help had come of thy bands;
• 690And oh! once more thou hadst held our throne
• And ruled thy Scotish lands!

• But while the King o'er his foes still raged
• With a heart that nought could tame,
• Another man sprang down to the crypt;
• And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp'd,
• There stood Sir Robert Græme.

• But when I told her the bitter end
• Of the stern and just award,
• She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times
• She kissed the lips of her lord.

• And then she said,—“My King, they are dead!”
• And she knelt on the chapel-floor,
• And whispered low with a strange proud smile,—
• “James, James, they suffered more!”

• 810Last she stood up to her queenly height,
• But she shook like an autumn leaf,
• As though the fire wherein she burned
• Then left her body, and all were turned
• To winter of life-long grief.

• And “O James!” she said,—“My James!” she
• said,—
• “Alas for the woful thing,
• That a poet true and a friend of man,
• In desperate days of bale and ban,
• Should needs be born a King!”