Susan had in truth been resting in perfect quietness, being extremely busy over her spinning, so as to be ready for the weaver who came round periodically to direct the more artistic portions of domestic work.  However, she joyfully produced the scroll from the depths of the casket where she kept her chief treasures, and her spindle often paused in its dance as she watched her husband over it, with his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, from whence he only removed them now and then to set down a letter or two by way of experiment.  She had to be patient, for she heard nothing that night but that he believed it was French, that the father of deceits himself might be puzzled with the thing, and that she might as well ask him for his head at once as propose his consulting Master Francis.

The next night he unfolded it with many a groan, and would say nothing at all; but he sat up late and waked in early dawn to pore over it again, and on the third day of study he uttered a loud exclamation of dismay, but he ordered Susan off to bed in the midst, and did not utter anything but a perplexed groan or two when he followed her much later.

It was not till the next night that she heard anything, and then, in the darkness, he began, “Susan, thou art a good wife and a discreet woman.”

Perhaps her heart leapt as she thought to herself, “At last it is coming, I knew it would!” but she only made some innocent note of attention.

“Thou hast asked no questions, nor tried to pry into this unhappy mystery,” he went on.

“I knew you would tell me what was fit for me to hear,” she replied.

“Fit!  It is fit for no one to hear!  Yet I needs must take counsel with thee, and thou hast shown thou canst keep a close mouth so far.”

“Concerns it our Cissy, husband?”

“Ay does it Our Cissy, indeed!  What wouldst say, Sue, to hear she was daughter to the lady yonder.”

“To the Queen of Scots?”

“Hush! hush!” fairly grasping her to hinder the words from being uttered above her breath.

“And her father?”

“That villain, Bothwell, of course.  Poor lassie, she is ill fathered!”

“You may say so.  Is it in the scroll?”

“Ay! so far as I can unravel it; but besides the cipher no doubt much was left for the poor woman to tell that was lost in the wreck.”

And he went on to explain that the scroll was a letter to the Abbess of Soissons, who was aunt to Queen Mary, as was well known, since an open correspondence was kept up through the French ambassador.  This letter said that “our trusty Alison Hepburn” would tell how in secrecy and distress Queen Mary had given birth to this poor child in Lochleven, and how she had been conveyed across the lake while only a few hours old, after being hastily baptized by the name of Bride, one of the patron saints of Scotland.  She had been nursed in a cottage for a few weeks