Night fell:  the light shone as usual; the queen signalled, it disappeared.  Mary Stuart waited in vain; everything remained in darkness:  the escape was for the same evening.  The queen heard eight o’clock, nine o’clock, and ten o’clock strike successively.  At ten o’clock the sentinels were relieved; Mary Stuart heard the patrols pass beneath her windows, the steps of the watch recede:  then all returned to silence.  Half an hour passed away thus; suddenly the owl’s cry resounded thrice, the queen recognised George Douglas’s signal:  the supreme moment had come.

In these circumstances the queen found all her strength revive:  she signed to Mary Seyton to take away the bar and to fix the rope ladder, while, putting out the lamp, she felt her way into the bedroom to seek the casket which contained her few remaining jewels.  When she came back, George Douglas was already in the room.

“All goes well, madam,” said he.  “Your friends await you on the other side of the lake, Thomas Warden watches at the postern, and God has sent us a dark night.”

The queen, without replying, gave him her hand.  George bent his knee and carried this hand to his lips; but on touching it, he felt it cold and trembling.

“Madam,” said he, “in Heaven’s name summon all your courage, and do not let yourself be downcast at such a moment.”

“Our Lady-of-Good-Help,” murmured Seyton, “come to our aid!”

“Summon to you the spirit of the kings your ancestors,” responded George, “for at this moment it is not the resignation of a Christian that you require, but the strength and resolution of a queen”

“Oh, Douglas!  Douglas,” cried Mary mournfully, “a fortune-teller predicted to me that I should die in prison and by a violent death:  has not the hour of the prediction arrived?”

“Perhaps,” George said, “but it is better to die as a queen than to live in this ancient castle calumniated and a prisoner.”

“You are right, George,” the queen answered; “but for a woman the first step is everything:  forgive me”.  Then, after a moment’s pause, “Come,” said she; “I am ready.”

George immediately went to the window, secured the ladder again and more firmly, then getting up on to the sill and holding to the bars with one hand, he stretched out the other to the queen, who, as resolute as she had been timid a moment before, mounted on a stool, and had already set one foot on the window-ledge, when suddenly the cry, “Who goes there?” rang out at the foot of the tower.  The queen sprang quickly back, partly instinctively and partly pushed by George, who, on the contrary, leaned out of the window to see whence came this cry, which, twice again renewed, remained twice unanswered, and was immediately followed by a report and the flash of a firearm:  at the same moment the sentinel on duty on the tower blew his bugle, another set going the alarm bell, and the cries, “To arms, to arms!” and “Treason, treason!” resounded throughout the castle.