Chastelâr watched the Queen with eager eyes. After a while he struck a few notes on the lute, without which he seldom travelled; and observing that this, as usual, was the signal for general attention, and that Mary did not seem to disapprove, proceeded to play a mournful melody, which, as it rose and fell, he accompanied in apparent abstraction with his voice. ‘Gone! wholly gone! How cold and dark; A cheerless world, of hope bereft; The beacon quench’d, and not a spark In all the dull gray ashes left. ‘No more, no more, a living part In life’s contending maze to own; Dead to its kind, an empty heart Feeds on itself alone!--alone! ‘The present all a blank, and worse; No ray along the future cast; All blighted by the blighting curse, Except the past!--except the past! ‘Ay, if the cup be crush’d and spilt, More than the sin the loss I rue, And if the cloud was black with guilt, The silver light of love shone through. ‘And though the price be maddening pain; One-half their rapture to restore, And live those blissful hours again, I’d pay the cruel price once more. ‘Dreams! dreams! Not backward flows the tide Of life and love--it cannot be: Well--thine the triumph and the pride, The suffering and the shame for me!’ As he concluded, even the rough boatmen looked from one to the other in undisguised approval. Never insensible to the charms of music have been these bold sons of the sea. To this day they are persuaded that the silver shoals of herring are attracted by harmonious sounds, and they dredge for oysters with a low monotonous chant, that they believe peculiarly grateful to that retiring zoophyte. Long after Chastelâr’s last notes had died gradually out over the silent waters, they laid to their oars with a will, and seemed to pull their long sweeping strokes in measured cadence to the unforgotten strain. The Maries, too, applauded enthusiastically, all but one, and she was weeping in silence, because her heart was full. In the stern of the boat, a wide roomy shallop, pulled by some six or eight oars, the Queen sat apart from the rest of the company. More than once she had glanced at Chastelâr while he sung, and varying expressions, none of them in keeping with the serene sky overhead, had crossed her brow. After he had finished, she remained silent for several minutes, absorbed in deep reflection. By degrees, as they approached the opposite shore of Burntisland, and the hills of Fife began to rise clear and brown above the black, jagged rocks and level strips of white sand that edged the water’s margin, the attention of Her Majesty’s train became diverted to the different objects around, and anon a shoal of porpoises, tumbling to windward in grotesque succession, drew them, with many exclamations of wonder and amusement, to the bows.