them and compelling them to betake themselves to labour unsuitable to
their rank--to perform the cruel acts. The implements of enchantment
were destroyed, the witches burned, and the king recovered. This was
but a mere respite to his Majesty: the friends upon whom he relied
turned their hands against him, and before long his mangled body lay
buried in the bed of the river Findhorn.

Elthus Alipes, or Swiftfoot, being a worthless prince, was confined in
prison to the day of his death. Historians record many evil signs seen
during his short reign--two years. An ominous comet, and shoals of
monstrous fishes resembling human beings, swimming with half their
bodies above the water, and having black skin covering their heads and
necks, were among the portentous appearances. Spalding, in his history
of the troubles of Scotland in his own time, describes a sea monster
seen in the river Don in the month of June 1635. It had, says the
historian, a head like a great mastiff dog, hands, arms, and breast
like a man, short legs and a tail. Spalding concluded that the
appearance of such a monster did not come as a sign of good to
Aberdeen.

Kenneth III. became a victim to revenge, an inordinate taste for
magnificence, and superstition. Kenneth, it appears, for reasons well
pleasing to the Church, visited the shrine of St. Palladius at Fordun;
and on returning home he fell into a snare laid for him. Around the
castle of Fettercairn were grounds well stocked with beasts of chase,
and there the king intended to indulge in the manly exercise of
hunting. The owner of that place, Lady Fenella, a relative of
Constantine and Grime, having a long deep-rooted hatred against
Kenneth, conceived the design of bringing him to an untimely end. With
this object in view, she built a grand tower, containing an infernal
machine for throwing javelins or sharp-pointed lances at any one who
should handle a golden apple, set with precious stones, held in the
hand of a bronze statue of Kenneth that stood in the centre of a room.
She invited him to become her guest--an invitation he accepted. After
dinner, the perfidious woman conducted him into the tower, professedly
to see and admire the exquisite furnishings with which it was
decorated. In his fondness for grandeur, he lingered to admire the
elegant figures and flowers; the rich tapestry, interwoven with gold;
and the statue with its golden apple. Just at the moment the king's
eyes rested on the statue,