It was a dark, but lovely night; moonless, but liquid and transparent; the stars which gemmed the firmament glittered more brightly from the absence of the mightier planet, and from the influence of a slight degree of frost upon the atmosphere, although it was indeed so slight, that its presence could be traced only in the crispness of the herbage, and in the uncommon purity of the heavens. Beneath a sky such as I have vainly endeavored to portray, the towers of Fotheringay rose black and dismal above the ancestral oaks and sweeping glades of its demesne. It would have appeared to a casual observer that all were at rest, buried in utter forgetfulness of all their hopes and sorrows, within that massive pile, save the lonely sentinel, whose progress round the battlements, although invisible, might be traced by the clatter of his harness, and the sullen echoes of his steel-shod stride. But to a nearer and more accurate survey, a single light, feebly twinkling through a casement of the dungeon-keep, told a far different tale. At times that solitary ray streamed in unbroken lines far into the bosom of the darkness; at times it was momentarily obscured, as if by the passage of some opaque body, though the transit, if such it were, was too brief to reveal the form or motions of the obstacle. Once, however, the shadow paused, and then, as its outlines stood forth in strong relief against the illumination of the chamber, the delicate proportions and musing attitude of a female might be discerned with certainty. It was the queen of Scotland. Her earthly sorrows were drawing to their close; the peace, for which she had long ceased to look, save in the silence of the tomb, was now within her grasp. Mary’s last sun had set.