to undertake all of a boy's exercises, and to endure all a boy's
privations. She could bring down a hare, at the first shot, from the
back of a galloping horse; she could outride the most expert huntsman in
her train.

So she grew from childhood into girlhood, and at thirteen was as bold
and fearless, as wilful and self-possessed as any young fellow of
twenty-one. But besides all this she was a wonderful scholar; indeed,
she would be accounted remarkable even in these days of bright
girl-graduates. At thirteen she was a thorough Greek scholar; she
was learned in mathematics and astronomy, the classics, history, and
philosophy; and she acquired of her own accord German, Italian, Spanish,
and French.

Altogether, this girl Queen of the North was as strange a compound of
scholar and hoyden, pride and carelessness, ambition and indifference,
culture and rudeness, as ever, before her time or since, were combined
in the nature of a girl of thirteen. And it is thus that our story finds
her.

One raw October morning in the year 1639, there was stir and excitement
at the palace in Stockholm. A courier had arrived bearing important
dispatches to the Council of Regents which governed Sweden during the
minority of the Queen, and there was no one to officially meet him.

Closely following the lackey who received him, the courier strode into
the council-room of the palace. But the council-room was vacant.

It was not a very elegant apartment, this council-room of the palace
of the kings of Sweden. Although a royal apartment, its appearance was
ample proof that the art of decoration was as yet unknown in Sweden. The
room was untidy and disordered; the council-table was strewn with the
ungathered litter of the last day's council, and even the remains of a
coarse lunch mingled with all this clutter. The uncomfortable-looking
chairs all were out of place, and above the table was a sort of
temporary canopy to prevent the dust and spiders' webs upon the ceiling
from dropping upon the councillors.

The courier gave a sneering look upon this evidence that the refinement
and culture which marked at least the palaces and castles of other
European countries were as yet little considered in Sweden. Then,
important and impatient, he turned to the attendant. "Well," he said,
"and is there none here to receive my dispatches? They call for--houf!
so! what manners are these?"

What manners indeed! The courier might well ask this. For, plump