VII. POOR QUEEN MARY paid but a brief and troubled visit to the country of her birth; but some of the domestics who came with her from France remained in Scotland after their mistress had sailed across the Solway. Among these was Marie Touchet, who had been body servant to the Queen, and who was married in the spring of 1566, at the Palace of Holyrood, to a trusty retainer of the Earl of Erroll-one of the loyal noblemen who through good and evil report adhered to Mary. Loyalty had been a passion with the courtly and comely Hays ever since Robert the Bruce, after the disastrous eclipse of the great house of Comyn, had conferred on his tried friend the barony of Slains, which at that time included nearly the whole district that lies between the Ugie and the Ythan. It was only natural that the retainers of the great house of Erroll should be in favour at Court, and thus it happened that Anthony Holdfast had been permitted to take with him to his distant home among the bleak moors of Buchan the favourite servant of the Queen. Marie had been born among the leafy woodlands of Fontainebleau; and Anthony, who was desperately in love with his charming little wife, gallantly proposed that her new home should be christened or re-christened after the place where she was bred. It was a pleasant fancy enough; and Marie was duly grateful, and thanked her Scotch husband in her pretty though rather incomprehensible French-Scots very sweetly for his loving devotion to la belle France and to herself. Yet there was a tear in her eye, and her gay smile grew wistful and doubtful when she compared the Fontainebleau of her girlhood with the Fontainbleau to which she was welcomed. The contrast between the sunny plains and the leafy forests of the South and this gaunt farm-house upon the barren seaboard of the Mare Tenebrosum was certainly very striking. As the melodious syllables of Fontainbleau' sound curiously out of place among Gasks,' and 'Achnagatts,' and Yokieshills,' so the blythe little Frenchwoman must have felt ill at ease for a time among her novel surroundings. 6 6 The Holdfasts, though neither lords nor lairds, clung like limpets to their rocks; and thus it came about that in the year One a Mrs. Holdfast was still tenant of Fontainbleau. Her husband, Mark Holdfast, had died a month or two before his youngest daughter was born; so that for more than seventeen years Mrs. Holdfast had been a widow. She had had a numerous family; but the eldest son Mark was at least twenty years older than his sister Euphame. For after the birth of five sons in succession there had been a long break-an interval of ten years and upwards; and then Dick had come, and then, a year later, Euphame or Eppie. The elder sons had all swarmed off from the family hive-some were farmers, some were sailors, some gatt, the farm which 'marched' with Fontainbleau; and Mark had married about the time that Eppie was born. So that Eppie and her nephews and nieces were nearly of an age, and might have been boon companions and bosom friends if Eppie had chosen. But in point of fact the relations between the two farm-houses were not particularly cordial. Young Mark and his comely wife and her comelier daughters were the simple, unpretending, honest sort of people that are to be met with in any average Buchan farm-house; but in Eppie there was a strain of unfamiliar blood. They were soft and gentle, and perhaps rather inclined to flabbiness, physical and intellectual; she was keen, piquant, exacting. They were contented with their lot: a fitful fire burned in her veins. The Achnagatt girls were shy, timid, and undecided the girl at Fontainbleau looked you straight in the face as a hawk looks at you without winking. Her bright black eyes might have been thought somewhat overbold in a less perfectly moulded face: but such a face disarms criticism. The Norsemen, who peopled these northern coasts, had no part in this girl. Eppie was half a Frenchwoman and half a gipsy. : This was how the estrangement between the two houses came about. Old Mrs. Holdfast had been a masterful woman. She was Euphame Keith in her maidenhood, and the Keiths, from the great Marshal down to the farmer at the Mains, were as obstinate as mules; but this latest wild-flower softened her into graciousness. The girl was the spoilt pet of her widowhood. Eppie was perfect, immaculate, without flaw or blemish of any sort. To eyes not blinded by love, this little gipsy-cat was by no means without flaw or blemish. Flawless, indeed, she would have missed her main attraction, like that kind of china which is only perfect when cracked. It would have been better for herself and for them all had she been broken in--to deccrum; but then, perhaps, the wild violet, or rather the sweet-briar, flavour of her life-it is the sweet briar and not the sweet violet which scents the garden at Fontainbleau-might have evaporated; and this history might not have been written. For though mine is a novel without a heroine (as Vanity Fair' was a novel without a hero), I need not affect to disguise that the only maid to whom I mean to offer you even a casual introduction, who could have played the part had I decided to fill it, is Eppie Holdfast. But I have no heroineor at most one only-that tight little craft, the 'Crookit Meg.' Mark, as I have said, was a plain man,-plain in manner and plain in speech, if not in person. His affections were deep though by no means effusive; and he had a specially warm place in his heart for his mother, and for Eppie too. But he felt that a character with some very curious and unaccountable traits, which he did not pretend to fathom--they were not in his line-was being allowed to run to seed; and he spoke his mind frankly and bluntly. This was the beginning of the breach which gradually widened as Eppie's moods grew day after day more wilful and restive and incalculable. For hardened her heart against whoever ventured to hint that this undisciplined favourite would inevitably prove a heart-break to her mother. Thus a false element came into her life; while, on the other hand, Mark, after a single repulse, washed his hands of the consequences, and went his way. But he too felt sore, angry, vexed: it troubled him that anyone should come between him and his mother; and he silently resented the injustice, as he considered it, of her choice. Thus division was established, with the usual consequences. When love begins to sicken and decay, It useth an enforced ceremony,— a ceremony which is never more irksome than when it grows up between those who are near of kin or near in love; and Mark adored his mother. But Eppie was not troubled; so long as she was permitted to go her own way unchallenged, she was supremely tolerant because perfectly indifferent. Yet there had been a time-now some seasons past-when Eppie's fate hung in the balance. VIII. FONTAINBLEAU is built on a heathery plateau upon the summit of the Heughs. Anyone acquainted with the coast knows Longhaven,-a ravine or chasm which penetrates for well nigh a quarter of a mile into the solid land; and at the upper end of this ravine the old farmhouse stands-or stood within the memory of living men. There is another chasm a hundred yards further south called Pothead; another beyond it called Hell's Lum. Opposite Hell's Lum, and nearly blocking up the passage from the open sea, is the island of Dunbuy. This is the last of the great granite headlands; thereafter the cliffs break away, and the coast sinks down to the sandy bents which enclose the Bay of Slains. The farm of Achnagatt lies behind the sandhills which shelter it from the sea, and is separated from Fontainbleau by the great south road that now is, and by an affluent of the Water of Slains. Fontainbleau has no shelter of any kind-it stands, as I have said, upon the summit of the cliff, and the fierce winter winds beat upon its windows day and night. Sometimes, when the winds have churned the waves into yeast, the windows that look to the east are white with the driving foam. No tree can take root upon that inclement seaboard; the alder bushes whenever they rise above the garden wall are cut across as by a knife. What may be called the arable district of this country is singularly unpicturesque; but when, leaving the plateau, we descend into the chasms along the coast, we enter another world-a world of romance and mystery, of light and shade, of stern strength and tender beauty, where the measured beat of the wave and the sorrowful complaint of the sea-mew only add to the impressive solitariness of the scene. The path which leads from round boulders, resting beside bubbling spring or mossy bank of ferns and primroses, the blue sea and the white sea-birds framed in every variety of green, is one of the most delightful that can be imagined. The promontory between Longhaven and Pothead consists of a succession of heathery knolls, sparsely planted with scraggy spruce and juniper bushes, where the earliest woodcock is sure to alight, it being the first bit of cover this side Norway. At the extreme point even the heather wears off, and the bare rocks rise naked and jagged from the water, yellow with lichen and brown with tangle. They used to call a particular ledge or niche on this headland 'Charlie's Howff.' This was the natural observatory from which Uncle Ned took his bird's-eye views of nature. And the cool sparkling water of the Rood well, bubbling up from some unfathomable depth below the sea, was the only stimulant which the old naturalist on his rambles could be persuaded to touch. It was older, he asserted, than the oldest vintage in the Provost's cellar of an age indeed to be computed, not by years of annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and the fatal periods of kingdoms. So it went well with the bread and cheese which he carried with him when on the tramp. 'What brings you here, Uncle Ned?' little Eppie would inquirelittle Eppie, then about ten years old. 'If you lived in the High Street of Lonnon, Eppie, you would sit at the window to see the folk gae by. So I sit here to see my freens pass the sea-birds, and the porpoises, and the whales. It's the calendar that shows me the time o' year. When I notice the lang wedges o' wild swans and bean geese and loons and lang-tailed harelds and eider deucks flyin' past to the south, I ken that autumn is over and the winter comin'. Then when they begin to return it is a sign and a testimony that the spring time is at hand. Sae when the whales are blowin' like waterspoots, and the grampuses rollin' about like barrels, and the solans fa in' like bullets into the water, the fisher bodies are advised that the great herrin' shoals, that bide in the deep sea till the heat o' summer, are nearin' the shore. Truly there's nae month in the year like June, wi' the bays a' swarmin' wi' fish; tho' indeed the haill year is a perfec' perpetual feast to them that remember Him who designed the birds and the beasts and young and auld bairns-like you and me, Eppie.' At other times he would be accompanied by Alister, the sturdy schoolboy, who lived under his kinsman's roof-for Alister's father and the old boat-builder had been cousins-and then the children would have famous days of scrambling among the rocks. Eppie could climb like a squirrel or a cat; her eye was perfect; even when on a narrow, slippery ledge, with the surf boiling below, her head never failed her. It seemed that a spice of danger added to the zest of her enjoyment, putting her upon her mettle and bracing her nerves. If she could induce Alister to venture along a ledge from which he could not return without a helping hand, she would skim round about hardened her heart against whoever ventured to hint that this undisciplined favourite would inevitably prove a heart-break to her mother. Thus a false element came into her life; while, on the other hand, Mark, after a single repulse, washed his hands of the consequences, and went his way. But he too felt sore, angry, vexed: it troubled him that anyone should come between him and his mother; and he silently resented the injustice, as he considered it, of her choice. Thus division was established, with the usual consequences. When love begins to sicken and decay, It useth an enforced ceremony,— a ceremony which is never more irksome than when it grows up between those who are near of kin or near in love; and Mark adored his mother. But Eppie was not troubled; so long as she was permitted to go her own way unchallenged, she was supremely tolerant because perfectly indifferent. Yet there had been a time-now some seasons past-when Eppie's fate hung in the balance. VIII. FONTAINBLEAU is built on a heathery plateau upon the summit of the Heughs. Anyone acquainted with the coast knows Longhaven,-a ravine or chasm which penetrates for well nigh a quarter of a mile into the solid land; and at the upper end of this ravine the old farmhouse stands-or stood within the memory of living men. There is another chasm a hundred yards further south called Pothead; another beyond it called Hell's Lum. Opposite Hell's Lum, and nearly blocking up the passage from the open sea, is the island of Dunbuy. This is the last of the great granite headlands; thereafter the cliffs break away, and the coast sinks down to the sandy bents which enclose the Bay of Slains. The farm of Achnagatt lies behind the sandhills which shelter it from the sea, and is separated from Fontainbleau by the great south road that now is, and by an affluent of the Water of Slains. Fontainbleau has no shelter of any kind-it stands, as I have said, upon the summit of the cliff, and the fierce winter winds beat upon its windows day and night. Sometimes, when the winds have churned the waves into yeast, the windows that look to the east are white with the driving foam. No tree can take root upon that inclement seaboard; the alder bushes whenever they rise above the garden wall are cut across as by a knife. What may be called the arable district of this country is singularly unpicturesque; but when, leaving the plateau, we descend into the chasms along the coast, we enter another world-a world of romance and mystery, of light and shade, of stern strength and tender beauty, where the measured beat of the wave and the sorrowful complaint of the sea-mew only add to the impressive solitariness of the scene. The path which leads from |