hat he had married at her wish. She
was queen. She desired him. She must have him at any cost.

"Though I lose Scotland and England both," she cried in a passion of
abandonment, "I shall have him for my own!"

Bothwell, in his turn, was nothing loath, and they leaped at each other
like two flames.

It was then that Mary wrote those letters which were afterward
discovered in a casket and which were used against her when she was on
trial for her life. These so-called Casket Letters, though we have not
now the originals, are among the most extraordinary letters ever
written. All shame, all hesitation, all innocence, are flung away in
them. The writer is so fired with passion that each sentence is like a
cry to a lover in the dark. As De Peyster says: "In them the animal
instincts override and spur and lash the pen." Mary was committing to
paper the frenzied madness of a woman consumed to her very marrow by
the scorching blaze of unendurable desire.

Events moved quickly. Darnley, convalescent from an attack of smallpox,
was mysteriously destroyed by an explosion of gunpowder. Bothwell was
divorced from his young wife on curious grounds. A dispensation allowed
Mary to wed a Protestant, and she married Bothwell three months after
Darnley's death.

Here one sees the consummation of what had begun many years before in
France. From the moment that she and Bothwell met, their union was
inevitable. Seas could not sunder them. Other loves and other fancies
were as nothing to them. Even the bonds of marriage were burst asunder
so that these two fiery, panting souls could meet.

It was the irony of fate that when they had so met it was only to be
parted. Mary's subjects, outraged by her conduct, rose against her. As
she passed through the streets of Edinburgh the women hurled after her
indecent names. Great banners were raised with execrable daubs
representing the murdered Darnley. The short and dreadful monosyllable
which is familiar to us in the pages of the Bible was hurled after her
wherever she went.

With Bothwell by her side she led a wild and ragged horde of followers
against the rebellious nobles, whose forces met her at Carberry Hill.
Her motley followers melted away, and Mary surrendered to the hostile
chieftains, who took her to the castle at Lochleven. There she became
the mother of twins--a fact that is seldom mentioned by historians.
These children were the fruit of her union with Bothwell. From this
time for