d maintained Cicely's admiration
by his vivid descriptions of the kindness, the grace, the charms of the
royal captive, in contrast with the innate vulgarity of their own
Countess.

Willie Douglas (the real Roland Graeme of the escape from Lochleven)
had long ago been dismissed from Mary's train, with all the other
servants who were deemed superfluous; but Antony had heard the details
of the story from Jean Kennedy (Mrs. Kennett, as the English were
pleased to call her), and Willie was the hero of his emulative
imagination.

"What would I not do to be like him!" he fervently exclaimed when he
had narrated the story to Humfrey and Cis, as they lay on a nest in the
fern one fine autumn day, resting after an expedition to gather
blackberries for the mother's preserving.

"I would not be him for anything," said Humfrey.

"Fie, Humfrey," cried Cis; "would not you dare exile or anything else
in a good cause?"

"For a good cause, ay," said Humfrey in his stolid way.

"And what can be a better cause than that of the fairest of captive
queens?" exclaimed Antony, hotly.

"I would not be a traitor," returned Humfrey, as he lay on his back,
looking up through the chequerwork of the branches of the trees towards
the sky.

"Who dares link the word traitor with my name?" said Babington, feeling
for the imaginary handle of a sword.

"Not I; but you'll get it linked if you go on in this sort."

"For shame, Humfrey," again cried Cis, passionately. "Why, delivering
imprisoned princesses always was the work of a true knight."

"Yea; but they first defied the giant openly," said Humfrey.

"What of that?" said Antony.

"They did not do it under trust," said Humfrey.

"I am not under trust," said Antony. "Your father may be a sworn
servant of the Earl and, the Queen--Queen Elizabeth, I mean; but I have
taken no oaths--nobody asked me if I would come here."

"No," said Humfrey, knitting his brows, "but you see we are all trusted
to go in and out as we please, on the understanding that we do nought
that can be unfaithful to the Earl; and I suppose it was thus with this
same Willie Douglas."

"She was his own true and lawful Queen," cried Cis. "His first duty
was to her."

Humfrey sat up and looked perplexed, but with a sudden thought
exclaimed, "No Scots are we, thanks be to Heaven! and what might be
loyalty in him would be rank treason in us."

"How know you that?" said Antony. "I have heard those who say that our