Thus in darkness and danger, too ominous, alas! of her subsequent career, Mary Stuart sped on towards the coast of Scotland, leaving behind her the sunny plains of her beloved France, as she left behind her the bright days of her youth,--days that she seemed instinctively to feel were never to dawn for her again through the storms and clouds that brooded over the destinies of her future kingdom. CHAPTER III. ‘Oh! ’gin I had a bonny ship, And men to sail wi’ me, It’s I wad gang to my true love, Sin’ my love comes not to me.’ About the same hour at which the galley bearing Mary Stuart and her fortunes, eluded, in the increasing darkness, the vigilance of the English cruisers, an archer of the Scottish Body-guard, with whom we have already made acquaintance, might have been seen pacing to and fro on a strip of white sand adjoining Calais harbour. After a long day of labour and excitement, preparatory also to a ride of some two hundred miles on the morrow, this midnight walk was perhaps the least judicious method of passing the hours sensible persons devote to repose. Our archer, nevertheless, continued it with a perseverance that denoted considerable preoccupation, pausing at intervals to gaze wistfully on the sea, and anon resuming his exercise, as if goaded to bodily effort by some acute mental conflict. In honest truth, like Sinbad the Sailor, he was oppressed by a metaphorical Old Man of the Sea, that he could not get rid of, although in his case the unwelcome equestrian had assumed the form of a prevailing idea, connected with a young woman instead of an old man, and resembling Sinbad’s encumbrance in no particular except the tenacity with which it clung.