oard, and next day at dawn she disembarked
on the other side of the Firth of Forth in the county of Fife.

Mary halted at Rosythe Castle only just long enough to breakfast, and
immediately recommenced her journey; for Lord Lindsay had declared that
he wished to reach his destination that same evening. Indeed, as the sun
was setting, Mary perceived gilded with his last rays the high towers of
Lochleven Castle, situated on an islet in the midst of the lake of the
same name.

No doubt the royal prisoner was already expected at Lochleven Castle,
for, on reaching the lake side, Lord Lindsay's equerry unfurled his
banner, which till then had remained in its case, and waved it from
right to left, while his master blew a little hunting bugle which he
wore hanging from his neck. A boat immediately put off from the island
and came towards the arrivals, set in motion by four vigorous oarsmen,
who had soon propelled it across the space which separated it from the
bank. Mary silently got into it, and sat down at the stern, while Lord
Lindsay and his equerry stood up before her; and as her guide did not
seem any more inclined to speak than she was herself to respond, she had
plenty of time to examine her future dwelling.

The castle, or rather the fortress of Lochleven, already somewhat gloomy
in its situation and architecture, borrowed fresh mournfulness still
from the hour at which it appeared to the queen's gaze. It was, so far
as she could judge amid the mists rising from the lake, one of those
massive structures of the twelfth century which seem, so fast shut up
are they, the stone armour of a giant. As she drew near, Mary began
to make out the contours of two great round towers, which flanked the
corners and gave it the severe character of a state prison. A clump of
ancient trees enclosed by a high wall, or rather by a rampart, rose
at its north front, and seemed vegetation in stone, and completed the
general effect of this gloomy abode, while, on the contrary, the eye
wandering from it and passing from islands to islands, lost itself in
the west, in the north, and in the south, in the vast plain of Kinross,
or stopped southwards at the jagged summits of Ben Lomond, whose
farthest slopes died down on the shores of the lake.

Three persons awaited Mary at the castle door: Lady Douglas, William
Douglas her son, and a child of twelve who was called Little Douglas,
and who was neither a son nor a brother of the inhabitants of th