‘This way, if you please, for the kings,’ said the voice.  ’They are now starting for the kings.’

‘They’ proved to be a curiously mixed little group of people who were waiting at the entrance through the enclosure for the arrival of the official guide.  There were a tall red-bearded man with a very Scotch accent and a small gentle wife, also an American father with his two bright and enthusiastic daughters, a petty-officer of the navy in his uniform, two young men whose attention was cruelly distracted from the monuments by the American girls, and a dozen other travellers of various sexes and ages.  Just as Maude and Frank joined them the guide, a young fresh-faced fellow, came striding up, and they passed through the opening into the royal burying-ground.

‘This way, ladies and gentlemen,’ cried the hurrying guide, and they all clattered over the stone pavement.  He stopped beside a tomb upon which a lady with a sad worn face was lying.  ‘Mary, Queen of Scots,’ said he, ’the greatest beauty of her day.  This monument was erected by her son, James the First.’

‘Isn’t she just perfectly sweet?’ said one of the American girls.

‘Well, I don’t know.  I expected more of her than that,’ the other answered.

‘I reckon,’ remarked the father, ’that if any one went through as much as that lady did, it would not tend to improve her beauty.  Now what age might the lady be, sir?’

‘Forty-four years of age at the time of her execution,’ said the guide.

‘Ah weel, she’s young for her years,’ muttered the Scotchman, and the party moved on.  Frank and Maude lingered to have a further look at the unfortunate princess, the bright French butterfly, who wandered from the light and warmth into that grim country, a land of blood and of psalms.

‘She was as hard as nails under all her gentle grace,’ said Frank.  ’She rode eighty miles and hardly drew rein after the battle of Langside.’

‘She looks as if she were tired, poor dear!’ said Maude; ’I don’t think that she was sorry to be at rest.’

The guide was narrating the names of the owners of the tombs at the further end of the chapel.  ’Queen Anne is here, and Mary the wife of William the Third is beside her.  And here is William himself.  The king was very short and the queen very tall, so in the sculptures the king is depicted standing upon a stool so as to bring their heads level.  In the vaults beyond there are thirty-eight Stuarts.’

Thirty-eight Stuarts!  Princes, bishops, generals, once the salt of the earth, the mightiest of men, and now lumped carelessly together as thirty-eight Stuarts.  So Death the Republican and Time the Radical can drag down the highest from his throne.