postscript: ‘Excus my iuel writin thes furst tym’--‘iuel’ being no doubt intended for ‘evil.’ Another relic of the Queen’s captivity at Bolton was a pane of glass, upon which she had scratched ‘Marie R.’ with a diamond ring; but it was damaged during the execution of some repairs to the castle, and in removing the glass for greater security from the castle to Bolton Hall it was hopelessly smashed. The stories of Mary’s attempts at escape have long been considered mere fabrications, for, despite many intimate details of the months spent at Bolton, no reference to such matters have been discovered. In the face of this denial on the part of recorded history, Leyburn Shawl still holds affectionately to the story that Mary Stuart did leave the castle unobserved, and that she was overtaken there in the place called the Queen’s Gap. [Illustration: BOLTON CASTLE, WENSLEYDALE IN this feudal stronghold Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for six months in 1568. She was brought from Carlisle by Lord Scrope, the owner of Bolton Castle. The building forms a gaunt square, lofty and almost featureless, except for the broken towers which rise at each of the four corners. Lord Chancellor Scrope built the castle in the reign of Richard II., and his descendants occupied it for three centuries.] As we leave the grim castle, so full of memories of a great family and of a lovely Queen, we turn back before it is hidden from our gaze, and see the towers silhouetted against a golden sky much as it is depicted in these pages. We think of all the Scropes who have come and gone since that Lord Richard received license in 1379 to crenellate the fortress he had built, and we regret again the disappearance of all those sumptuous tombs that once adorned the choir of Easby Abbey. However, there are memorials to members of the family in Wensley Church lying a little to the east beyond the wooded park of Bolton Hall, and we shall arrive there before long if we keep to the right at the turning beneath the height known as Scarth Nick. On the opposite side of the dale Penhill Beacon stands out prominently, with its flat summit reflecting just enough of the setting sun to recall a momentous occasion when from that commanding spot a real beacon-fire sent up a great mass of flame and sparks. It was during the time of Napoleon’s threatened invasion of England, and the lighting of this beacon was to be the signal to the volunteers of Wensleydale to muster and march to their rendezvous. The watchman on Penhill, as he sat by the piled-up brushwood, wondering, no doubt, what would happen to him if the dreaded invasion were really to come about, saw, far away across the Vale of Mowbray, a light which he at once took to be the beacon upon Roseberry Topping. A moment later tongues of flame and smoke were pouring from his own hilltop, and the news spread up the dale like wildfire. The volunteers armed themselves rapidly, and with drums beating they marched away, with only such delay