But--" he paused.
"How!" exclaimed the King, in terror.

"What new evil?
Rothsay?
It must be--it is Rothsay! Speak out! What new folly has been done?
What fresh mischance ?" "My lord--my liege, folly and mischance are now ended with my hapless nephew." "He is dead!--he is dead!" screamed the agonized parent.

"Albany, as thy brother, I conjure thee! But no, I am thy brother no longer.

As thy king, dark and subtle man, I charge thee to tell the worst." Albany faltered out: "The details are but imperfectly known to me; but the certainty is, that my unhappy nephew was found dead in his apartment last night from sudden illness--as I have heard." "Oh, Rothsay!--Oh, my beloved David! Would to God I had died for thee, my son--my son!" So spoke, in the emphatic words of Scripture, the helpless and bereft father, tearing his grey beard and hoary hair, while Albany, speechless and conscience struck, did not venture to interrupt the tempest of his grief.

But the agony of the King's sorrow almost instantly changed to fury--a mood so contrary to the gentleness and timidity of his nature, that the remorse of Albany was drowned in his fear.
"And this is the end," said the King, "of thy moral saws and religious maxims! But the besotted father who gave the son into thy hands--who gave the innocent lamb to the butcher--is a king, and thou shalt know it to thy cost.