appointed for the ensuing day. "That soul," said
Mary, calmly crossing herself, "is unworthy the joys of heaven, which
repines because the body must endure the stroke of the axe. I submit
willingly to the lot which heaven has decreed for me; though I did not
expect the Queen of England would set the first example of violating the
sacred person of a sovereign prince." Then laying her hand on a Bible,
which happened to be near her, she solemnly protested her innocence.

At the scaffold she prayed for the prosperity of her son, and for a long
and peaceable reign to Elizabeth. She hoped for mercy, she declared,
only through the death of Christ, at the foot of whose image she
willingly shed her blood. With intrepid calmness she laid her neck on
the block; her hands were held by one executioner, while the other, with
two blows, dissevered her head from her body. "So perish all the enemies
of Elizabeth!" exclaimed the dean, as he held up the streaming head.
"Amen," answered the Earl of Kent alone; every other eye was drowned in
tears; every other voice was stifled in commiseration. Thus, after a
life of forty-four years and two months, nineteen years of which had
been passed in captivity, perished the lovely and unfortunate Mary,
Queen of Scots.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH[12]

[Footnote 12: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

By MARION HARLAND

(1579-1631)

[Illustration: Captain John Smith.]

Of the antecedents of John Smith, Esquire, Captain and Knight, little is
recorded beyond the facts that he was of gentle blood and honorable
lineage, and that he was born in Lancashire, England, in 1579.

He was still under age when he enlisted as a private soldier and fought
with "our army" in Flanders. Sigismund Bathor, Duke of Transylvania, was
warring with the Turks, and young Smith, athirst for adventure, next
took service under him. Before the Transylvanian town of Regall, he
killed three Turkish officers in single combat, for which doughty deed
he was knighted. The certificate of Sigismund's patent empowering the
Englishman to quarter three Turks' heads upon the family coat-of-arms is
in the Herald's Office in London.

The tables were turned by his subsequent capture by the Turks. He was
sent to Tartary as a slave, not a prisoner of war, and compelled to
perform the most ignoble tasks, until, escaping by killing his brutal
master, he made his way by his wits to his native country in 1604. He
was now twenty-fiv