When the news reached London the Queen was furious at the insult which she conceived had been especially aimed at her authority as Regent, and gave vent to language which for vigour would have done credit to her exemplar, Queen Elizabeth. For the only time on record Caroline thoroughly lost her temper. She hastily summoned a council and proposed the wildest measures. The charter of Edinburgh, she said, must be withdrawn, the Provost must be incapacitated from ever holding office again, the commander of the garrison must be cashiered, and fines and imprisonment were to be the order of the day. The Duke of Argyll endeavoured to put in a moderating word on behalf of his countrymen. The Queen turned on him with fury, and said that sooner than brook such an insult she would make Scotland a hunting ground. “In that case, madam,” said the duke with a bow, “I will take leave of your Majesty, and go down to my own country to get my hounds ready.” Caroline recognised the covert threat in the duke’s words, and adjourned the council. Fortunately her anger was not of a kind to last long, and wiser counsels prevailed. The Scottish peers defended their countrymen in the House of Lords, and in the end a compromise was arrived at, by which the City of Edinburgh had to pay a nominal fine of £2,000, and the Provost was disgraced. It was on the Porteous Riots that Sir Walter Scott wrote his celebrated novel, _The Heart of Midlothian_. He introduces Queen Caroline in connection with Jeannie Deans, who walked all the way from Edinburgh to London to plead the cause of her sister, Effie Deans, who was sentenced to death according to Scottish law for concealing the birth of her illegitimate child. The father of this child, according to Scott’s romance, was Robertson, the prisoner who had escaped, and who was supposed to have headed the mob against Porteous. Of course, in a novel a good deal of fiction is reared on a slender basis of fact, and Scott makes some little mistakes. For example, in the Queen’s interview with Jeannie Deans he makes Lady Suffolk be in attendance, instead of Lady Sundon (Mrs. Clayton), whereas Lady Suffolk had left the court two years before; he also places the Queen’s palace at Richmond, where the interview took place, in Richmond Park, whereas it was in Richmond Gardens. But this much at least is true, and may be quoted as one of the many instances of the Queen’s kindness of heart. A certain Scottish peasant woman named Helen Walker actually did walk from Edinburgh to London, to plead with the Queen-Regent on behalf of her sister, then lying under sentence of death in the Tolbooth in Edinburgh. The sister, who was called Isabella, or Tibbie Walker, had secretly given birth to an illegitimate child, which shortly afterwards died, and by the Scottish law of those days she was adjudged, by wilfully concealing her condition, to have been guilty of its death. At the trial of this