"Ho! Scotland," he writes, "I would that thou mightest wander like Delos on the face of the sea, or sink to its profoundest depths, so that the sails of thy bright queen, vainly striving to seek her realm, might suddenly turn and bear her back to her fair Duchy of Tourraine." Six days after her departure, having evaded, under cover of a dense fog, the English cruisers sent out to intercept her, she landed at Leith, and proceeded to the Royal Palace of Holyrood at Edinburgh. CHAPTER IV. FACING TROUBLES IN SCOTLAND. The news of the unexpected arrival of the young Queen, who had come unattended by armed force, and had committed herself to the chivalry of the nation, awakened a degree of enthusiasm even in the stern "professors" of the Congregation. Feelings of loyalty to a long line of monarchs die hard in the human breast, and especially was this so in those days when the monarch, in the estimation of his people, stood for something more than the chairman of a national committee; and the mass of the Scottish people, whether adherents of the old religion, or professors of the new, saw in the fair Queen who had come amongst them the representative of a line of brave Sovereigns, around whom their forefathers had fought and died for national independence, and whose deeds of bravery were fresh in Scottish song and tradition, indeed, the influence which Mary wielded over the people was greater than could well be expected. Shortly after her arrival, a number of the most zealous nobles of the Congregation came to Edinburgh to help Knox banish the Mass from her household. But, after a few visits to Holyrood, their fierce fervour disappeared. "I have been here now for five days," remarked one of them to a friend, "and at the first I heard every man say, ’Let us hang the priest,’ but after that they had been twice or thrice in the Abbey, all that fervency passed. I think there be some enchantment whereby men are bewitched." And in truth it can be said that, with scarcely an exception, no one ever came directly under the influence of Mary Stewart without being, in some degree, impressed in her favour.