thee, Madam," answered her step-daughter meekly, and
then with another low curtsey she hurried off to her own room, not
waiting to hear the lady's angry words: "I wish, proud maiden, that I
had had the giving of the answer, for, by my troth, I would have turned
a deaf ear to thy request. Buried in Scotland, forsooth! Thou hast a
lover in Scotland, and it is he thou art hankering after, and not a
grave."

Two hours afterwards, when the Duke and his sons came back from hunting,
they found the castle in an uproar. All the servants were running about,
wringing their hands, and crying; and indeed it was little wonder, for
had not Lady Katherine's waiting-woman, when she went into her young
lady's room at noon, found her lying cold and white on her couch, and no
one had been able to rouse her? When the poor old Duke heard this, he
rushed up to her chamber, followed by all his seven sons; and when he
saw her lying there, so white, and still, he covered his face with his
hands, and cried out that his little Katherine, his dearly loved
daughter, was dead.

But the cruel step-mother shook her head and said nothing. Somehow she
did not believe that Lady Katherine was really dead, and she determined
to do a very cruel thing to find out the truth. When everyone had left
the room she ordered her waiting-maid, a woman who was as wicked as
herself, to melt some lead, and bring it to her in an iron spoon, and
when it was brought she dropped a drop on the young girl's breast; but
she neither started nor screamed, so the cruel Duchess had at last to
pretend to be satisfied that she was really dead, and she gave orders
that she should be buried at once in the little chapel by the lake.

But the old Duke remembered his promise, and vowed that it should be
performed.

So Lady Katherine's seven brothers went into the great park, and cut
down a giant oak tree, and out of the trunk of it they hewed a bier, and
they overlaid it with silver; while her sisters sat in the turret room
and sewed a beautiful gown of white satin, which they put on Lady
Katherine, and laid her on the silver bier; and then eight of her
father's men-at-arms took it on their shoulders, and her seven brothers
followed behind, and so the procession set out for Scotland.

And it all fell out as the old Duke had promised. At the first Scotch
kirk which the procession came to, the priests sang a solemn Mass, and
at the second, they caused the bells to toll mournfully, and