"I stand informed. Come, proceed; who comes next?" continued Mrs.
Baliol.

"Who comes next? Yon tall, thin made, savage looking man, with the
petronel in his hand, must be Andrew Ker of Faldonside, a brother's
son, I believe, of the celebrated Sir David Ker of Cessford; his
look and bearing those of a Border freebooter, his disposition
so savage that, during the fray in the cabinet, he presented his
loaded piece at the bosom of the young and beautiful Queen, that
queen also being within a few weeks of becoming a mother."

"Brave, beau cousin! Well, having raised your bevy of phantoms, I
hope you do not intend to send them back to their cold beds to warm
them? You will put them to some action, and since you do threaten
the Canongate with your desperate quill, you surely mean to novelise,
or to dramatise, if you will, this most singular of all tragedies?"

"Worse--that is less interesting--periods of history have been,
indeed, shown up, for furnishing amusement to the peaceable ages
which, have succeeded but, dear lady, the events are too well known
in Mary's days to be used as vehicles of romantic fiction. What
can a better writer than myself add to the elegant and forcible
narrative of Robertson? So adieu to my vision. I awake, like John
Bunyan, 'and behold it is a dream.' Well enough that I awake without
a sciatica, which would have probably rewarded my slumbers had I
profaned Queen Mary's bed by using it as a mechanical resource to
awaken a torpid imagination."

"This will never do, cousin," answered Mrs. Baliol; "you must get
over all these scruples, if you would thrive in the character of a