Douglas had left, withal, an able coadjutor within the castle, a boy of tender years, of mysterious parentage, and humble vocation, who was destined to act the part of the mouse in Æsop's beautiful fable. This unsuspected confederate was a youth of fifteen, who waited on the Lady of Lochleven in the capacity of page. He is known in history by the names of Willie Douglas, and the Little Douglas; in the castle he was called the Lad Willie, the Orphan Willie, and the Foundling Willie,[4] for he was found, when a babe, at the castle gates. Home, of Godscroft, says, "He was the natural brother of George Douglas,"[5] a statement perfectly reconcileable with the story of his first introduction into the family of the late Laird of Lochleven. Such incidents are not of unfrequent occurrence in the daily romance of life, and often has it happened that the appeal made to the parental feelings of a profligate seducer, in behalf of a guiltless child of sin and sorrow, has awakened feelings of feminine compassion in the bosom of the injured wife, and the forlorn stranger has received a home and nurture through her charity. This appears to have been the case with regard to Little Willie and the Lady of Lochleven; for, whether she suspected his connection with the laird her husband or not, he was taken in, and brought up under her auspices, and as attendant on her person. Frail as she had been in her youth, and cruel and vindictive in her treatment of the lawful daughter of her royal seducer, whom it irked her pride to consider as her sovereign, it is nevertheless pleasant to trace out the evidence of some good in the harsh Lady of Lochleven. The Foundling Willie remained in the castle, after the death of the old laird, an orphan dependent in the family, but his subsequent actions prove that he had received the education of a gentleman; for not only could he read and write, but he understood enough of French and other languages to be sent on secret missions to foreign princes. To these acquirements Willie added courage, firmness, and address, seldom paralleled in one of his tender years. There is not any circumstance in the course of Mary Stuart's career more striking than the fact that, in this dark epoch of her life, when deprived of all the attributes of royalty, oppressed, calumniated, and imprisoned, two friends like George and Willie Douglas should have been raised up for her in the family of her deadliest foes. The regent and his confederates, men whose hands had been soiled with English gold, had not calculated on the existence of the chivalric feelings which animated those young warm hearts with the determination of effecting the liberation of their captive queen.