Now, with all these rich stores to work on, these exceeding many flocks and herds of Northern legend and glamour, Lady Blanche should surely have been content, and not have descended into the South of England, upon a quiet country-house in Berkshire, to seize its one ewe lamb and claim that the heroine of the story which I hope to tell before I get to the end of my paper was none other than the termagant Countess Mary, hereditary lord high constable of Scotland, and the owner of Slains Castle at the beginning of last century. Sir, I am bound to admit that this audacious claim spoilt my wanderings up and down the pages of your excellent magazine, and I resolved that whenever I should find time I would write to you to revindicate the claims of the "Berkshire Lady" to be native born and entirely unconnected with the Countess Mary or Slains Castle. I can scarcely remember the time when I did not know the story, which indeed all Berkshire boys--or at any rate all Bath-road Berkshire boys--took as regularly as measles in early youth. But let me explain to New-World readers what I mean by a Bath-road Berkshire boy. Our royal county of Berks is in shape somewhat like a highlow or ancle-jack boot with the toe toward London, and at the tip of the toe Windsor Castle, which, as we all know, looks down on the Thames as it finally leaves the county, of which it has formed the northern boundary for more than one hundred miles. The sweet river--for in spite of all pollution it is still sweet at Windsor--has run all along the top of the boot and down the instep, and along the toes, taking Oxford, Abingdon, Wallingford, Henley, Reading and Maidenhead in its way, with other places historically interesting in a small way over here, but which would scarcely be known by name even in the best-drilled classes of your public schools. Along the sole of the boot, from the heel at Hungerford, but sloping gently upward till it joins the Thames at Reading, runs another stream (a river we call it in little England)-- The Kennet swift, for silver eels renowned.