We entered Kinross, the quiet village on the western shore of the lake, and followed the road to the boathouse, where an English motor party had just paused. Word had to be sent to the village for boatmen and I fell into conversation with the Englishman who was waiting like ourselves. He had come to Loch Leven on quite a different mission from ours--old castles and legends were so commonplace to him that he hardly seemed to understand why anyone should trouble himself about them. He had come to fish and assured us that Loch Leven trout were surpassed in excellence only by those in an Irish lake where he had fished the week before. He was sending his car away and expected to pass the night in pursuing the gentle art of Ike Walton. We were told that more people came to the lake to fish than to visit the castle. The fishing rights are owned by a local club and are jealously guarded. The minimum license fee for trout, of seven shillings sixpence, with an additional charge per hour, makes the sport a somewhat expensive luxury. But our boatmen had come and we put off for the castle. The lake averages very shallow, and it was necessary to go considerably out of the direct route, even in the light row-boat, to avoid the shoals. The bottom in many places was covered with a rank sedge, which our boatman declared fatal to fishing. It had gotten in the lake a few years ago--had come from America in some mysterious manner--and nothing could be done to check its rapid spread. While he bewailed the ravages of this interloper--from the land of the interlopers--our boat grated on the pebbly shore of the island. The castle, rude and ruinous indeed, is quite small and the only part intact is the low, square tower of the keep. In this is Queen Mary's chamber, and one may look down from the window from which she made her escape; the water then came up to the wall, though it is now several yards away. One need not rehearse the story of the queen's imprisonment at Loch Leven by the ambitious Douglas and her romantic escape through connivance with her captor's son, George Douglas, who succumbed to her charms as did nearly every one who came into her company. And who can wonder that the actual presence of the fair queen--whose name still enchants us after three hundred years--should prove so irresistible to those who met her face to face? Is it strange that one whose memory can cast such a glamour over the cheerless old pile that has brought us hither, should have so strongly influenced her associates?