LOCH LEVEN 89 



that island was her prison ; here the rude Morton 

 tried to bully her into signing away her rights ; 

 hence she may often have watched the shore at 

 night for the lighting of a beacon, a sign that a 

 rescue was at hand. 



The hills, at least, are much as she may have 

 seen them, and the square towers and crumbling 

 walls on the island met her eyes when they were 

 all too strong. The ' quay ' is no longer ' rude,' 

 as when ' The Abbot ' was written, and is crowded 

 with the green boats of the Loch Leven Company. 

 But you still land on her island under ' the huge 

 old tree ' which Scott saw, which the unhappy 

 Mary may herself have seen. The small garden 

 and the statues are gone, the garden whence 

 Roland Graeme led Mary to the boat and to brief 

 liberty and hope unfulfilled. Only a kind of 

 ground-plan remains of the halls where Lindesay 

 and Ruthven browbeat her forlorn Majesty. But 

 you may climb the staircase where Roland Graeme 

 stood sentinel, and feel a touch of what Pepys felt 

 when he kissed a dead Queen Katherineof Valois. 

 Like Roland Graeme, the Queen may have been 



