that cold cannot get in in winter nor heat in summer: there is only a
single narrow slit in the wall for the admission of light, but it is
comforting to know that the doomed wretches who inhabited it in past
ages had at least a temperate climate.

There is the room Queen Mary Stuart slept in when she occasionally
visited in the vicinity. The reader is perhaps not familiar with Queen
Mary's name in connection with Cockhoolet Castle, but there may be
other facts about her of which he is also ignorant. Does he know, for
instance, that she had a daughter by her third marriage, whom, as an
infant, she despatched to France to be reared in a nunnery, "that she
may not," said the unhappy queen, "run the risk of having such a lot
as I have"? Does he know that John Knox was possessed by a mad passion
of love for Mary Stuart? It has always been thought otherwise--that
in point of fact he held her in contempt; but as it is proverbial that
"nippin' and scartin' (figurative of course) is Scotch folks' wooin',"
there may be truth in the new discovery. But true or not true, it
is enough to make the bold Reformer blush standing on the top of his
pillar in the necropolis of Glasgow: perhaps he _is_ blushing, if he
were near enough to see.

Be that as it may, there is no manner of doubt that Mary Stuart
honored Cockhoolet Castle by abiding under its roof when it suited her
to do so. Have not I, the present writer, stood in the room she slept
in--looked from the small windows set in the ten-foot thick wall from
which she looked? Have I not gazed over the same country, up to the
same skies, into the same moon at which she gazed? Could her face be
more fair than that of the present Rose of Cockhoolet, her thoughts
more innocent, her reveries more sweet, than those of Bessie Ormiston,
who in the course of time had succeeded to the room which had been