chosen to put them, not into a strong iron box locked and pad-locked, of which he alone kept the key, but into a "small gilt coffer" which never belonged to him at all, but had been a gift to Mary from her first husband Francis,--why was he so very absurd as send them to Sir James Balfour in the Castle of Edinburgh, at the very time that a rebellion was rising in the nation, and that he was beginning to suspect Balfour's fidelity? They were sent, we are informed, "before his flying away" from Edinburgh, in the beginning of June 1567. Was this the moment at which he would be disposed to part with writings he had so carefully treasured? If he was afraid that his enemies would advance upon Edinburgh, why did he not take the "small gilt coffer" with him to Dunbar, instead of sending it to the very place where it was sure to become their prey? If the letters were in truth forged, it was necessary for the forgers to concoct as plausible a story concerning them as possible. They knew it was not likely that Bothwell would send them to the Castle tied up as an open packet; and the idea of a box would therefore occur to them. But as they had not in their possession any box which belonged to Bothwell, they were forced to make use of what they could get; and finding at Holyrood, when they rifled the palace of most of the Queen's valuables, the coffer in question, they would readily avail themselves of it. It would further occur to them, that Bothwell could not be supposed to have left the letters at Holyrood, which was not a place of any strength; and as they had not followed him to Dunbar, they were obliged to give out that he had made the Castle of Edinburgh their hiding-place. But if the letters had not been forgeries, and if they had been really preserved by Bothwell, they would have been more numerous,--they would not have been kept in one of Mary's trinket-boxes,--and they would never have found their way out of his own hands into the custody of Sir James Balfour.