Less need is there to speak of such strange adventures as my Lady Nithisdale's child (that was born soon after her Lord's escape from the Tower, in which, with such a noble valour and self-sacrifice, she aided him) being brought into the World with a broad Axe figured, as though by a Limner, on its Neck; or of the Countess of Cromartie's infant (she likewise Lay-in while the Earl was under sentence) having a thin red line or thread right round its neck. These things are perhaps to be accounted more as Phenomena of nature than as ominous prognostications, and I so dismiss 'em. But it is worth while to note that, for all the good authority we have of Lord Kilmarnock's Waiting-woman being affrighted by the vision of a Bloody Head, the story itself, or at least something germane to it, is as old as the Hills. During my travels in Sweden, I was told of a very strange mischance that had happened to one of their Kings who was named Charles;--but Charles the what, I do confess I know not;--who walking one evening in his garden, saw all at once a Wing of the Palace, that had been shut up and deserted for Twenty years, all blazing with Light from the Windows, as for some great Festival. And his Majesty, half suspecting this might be some Masquerading prank on the part of the Court Ladies, and half afraid that there was mischief in it, drew his Sword, and calling upon a brace of his Gentlemen to follow him, stave in a door and came into a Great Old Hall, that was the principal apartment in the said Wing. And at the upper End, where the ancient Throne of his ancestors was long since gone to Rags and Tatters, and abandoned to Dust and Cobwebs, he saw, sitting on the chair of Estate, and crowned, a little child that was then but a boy--the Duke of Sudermania. And lo! as he gazed upon him a Dreadful Ball, that seemed fashioned in the similitude of his own Head, showed itself under the Throne, rolled down the steps, and so came on to his very Feet, where it stopped, splashing his Boots unto the very ankle with Gore. The tale of the Bloody Boots, as 'tis called, is still quite familiar to every Nurse in Sweden; but I never heard how it ended, or whether King Charles had his Head cut off in the Long-run; but every Swede will swear to the Story; and as for the Boots, I have heard that they are to be seen, with the dark brown stains of the Blood still upon 'em, in a glass case at the House of one Mr. Herdström, who sells Aqua Vitæ over the Milliner's in the Bogbindersgade at Stockholm.