old foundation, and the struggle for appointments between the parent
house at Durham and the Scottish Government. Priors Akefield and Drax
are historical, and as the latter really did commission a body of moss-
troopers to divert an instalment of King James's ransom into his own
private coffers, I do not think I can have done him much injustice. As
the nunnery of St. Abbs has gone bodily into the sea, I have been the
less constrained by the inconvenient action of fact upon fiction. And
for the Hospital of St. Katharine's-by-the-Tower, its history is to be
found in Stowe's 'Survey of London,' and likewise in the evidence before
the Parliamentary Commission, which shows what it was intended by Queen
Philippa to have been to the river-side population, and what it might
have been had such intentions been understood and acted on--nay, what it
may yet become, since the foundation remains intact, although the
building has been removed.

C. M. YONGE.

November 24, 1869.




CHAPTER I: THE GUEST OF GLENUSKIE


A master hand has so often described the glens and ravines of Scotland,
that it seems vain and presumptuous to meddle with them; and yet we must
ask our readers to figure to themselves a sharp cleft sloping downwards
to a brawling mountain stream, the sides scattered with gray rocks of
every imaginable size, interspersed here and there with heather, gorse,