dropped his ‘_Benedicite_’ with gentle impartiality amongst the throng. The blessing was usually received with gratitude, though an exception might occur in the person of some stalwart man-at-arms, large of limb, fresh-coloured, and fair-bearded, who returned the good man’s greeting with derision or contempt. These reprobates were invariably well armed, and extremely soldier-like in their bearing, to be distinguished, moreover, by their blue velvet surcoats, on which St Andrew’s cross was embroidered in silver, and the peculiar form of their steel-lined bonnets, which they wore with a jaunty air on one side the head. Something, also, of more than the usual assumption of a soldier might be traced in their demeanour, as is apt to be the case with the members of a _corps d’élite_, and such the Archers of the Scottish Body-Guard had indeed a right to be considered both by friend and foe. Although in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, many of them, including their captain, the unfortunate Earl of Arran, were staunch Protestants; and at that rancorous period, the supporters of the Reformed Church did by no means confine themselves to a silent abnegation of the errors they had renounced. One archer, however, a young man with nothing peculiarly striking either in face or figure, save an air of frankness and quiet determination on his sun-burnt brow, acknowledged the benediction of a passing ecclesiastic with a humility that excited the jeers of two or three comrades, to which he replied with the quiet simplicity that seemed to be a part of his character, ‘An old man’s blessing, lads, can do neither you nor me any harm,’ and proceeded on his way without further remark or explanation; while the manner in which his rebuke was received by the scorners themselves, denoted that he was at least a person of some consideration and standing in the _corps_. Elbowing his way through a gaudy crowd, consisting of the Marquis d’Elbœuf’s retainers, who were accompanying their master in his attendance on his royal niece, and certain satellites of the House of Guise, for the duke and duchess, with Cardinal Lorraine, had already escorted the Queen of Scotland thus far upon her journey, our archer turned into an _auberge_, already filled with a mixture of courtiers, soldiers, pages, men-at-arms, and other officials, and seating himself at a small deal table, coarse and clean, requested to be served, in a tone of impatience that implied a vigorous appetite and a long fast. While the host, quick, courteous and smiling, bustled up to him, with napkin, trencher, and some two feet of bread, the archer removed the bonnet from his brow, and, looking around him, nodded to one or two acquaintances with an air of considerable preoccupation, ere he subsided into a profound fit of abstraction, which, to judge by his countenance, proceeded from no agreeable theme.