1567.] THE MURDER OF DARN LEY. 499 That at such a crisis he should have been attacked by a sudden and dangerous illness was, to say the least of it, a singular coincidence. A few miles from the castle blue spots broke out over his body, and he was carried into Glasgow languid and drooping, with a disease which the Court and the friends of the Court were pleased to call small -pox. There for a time he lay, his father absent, himself hanging between life and death, attended only by a few faithful servants, while the Queen with recovered health and spirits spent her Christmas with Bothwell at Drum- mond Castle and Tullibardine, waiting the issue of the disease. Unfortunately for all parties concerned, the King after a few days was reported to be slowly recovering. Either the natural disorder was too weak to kill him, or the poison had failed of its work. The Queen returned to Stirling : the favourite rode south to receive the exiles on their way back from Eng- land. ' In the yard of the hostelry of Whittingham/ Bothwell and Morton met ; and Morton, long after on the eve of his own execution, when to speak the truth might do him service where he was going, and could do him no hurt in this world thus described what passed between them : ' The Earl of Bothwell/ said Morton, ' proposed to me the purpose of the King's murder, seeing that it was the Queen's mind that he should be taken away, because she blamed the King of Davie's slaughter more than me/
