er vessel set
sail--a very different town it would have been then from the charming
little place it is to-day, with its low white cottages half covered with
flowers, the spotless walls as clean as damask tablecloths, and all so
gay and bright to the eye that grim Dundrennan Abbey in its midst is
like a skull fallen in a rose-garden.

"Ah," sighed Mrs. James, shaking her head, with a jam puff in her hand,
"if the Queen had listened to Maxwell she might have lived in safety to
be an old woman!"

"True, she might have kept her head," Sir S. agreed, comfortably cutting
himself a piece of plum cake; "but if she'd taken Maxwell's advice,
instead of sailing from Port Mary, never to see Scotland again, wouldn't
the whole civilized world miss its best-loved heroine of romance? No
other woman since history began has so captured the hearts of men, and
made herself so adored through the centuries, in spite of all her
faults, or because of them. Mary Stuart and Napoleon Bonaparte are the
two figures in history of whom no one ever tires of talking or reading."

"Still, we must be sad at Dundrennan, where her last night in Scotland
was spent," Mrs. James mildly persisted, having eaten her puff while Sir
S. argued. "I wonder if Michael Scott the magician, who lived here (he
comes into the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," you know), had prophetic
visions of Queen Mary and her fate? I should think so, for he had the
secret of all sorts of spells. The people of the neighbourhood believed
that he'd locked up the plague in an underground room of the Abbey, and
for years they dared not excavate for fear the demon should leap out and
ravage the country. They used to think they could hear a rustling----"

At that instant we heard one ourselves; a distinct rustling fell upon
our ears, and made us turn round with a start. The plague we feared was
tourists; but if it had been Michael Scott's demon, with a scarlet body
and a green head, I should have liked it better than Mrs. West's pale
purple coat and motoring bonnet. I don't know how Sir S. felt about the
surprise, but that was _my_ feeling, though I was glad to see her
brother. I find him the nicest thing about Mrs. West.

"Who would have thought of running against you?" she exclaimed, as Sir
S. jumped up from the table and shook hands as cordially as if there had
never been that mysterious row. "We've come from Port Mary, where Basil
sentimentalized over the stone Queen Mary stood on to get in