Passing from these cells, our conductor led us to an apartment on the same floor, containing a large quantity of exceedingly dusty lumber, among which he showed us what is said to have been Queen Mary's dining table. It is a veritable relic apparently, the two stands, one at each end, by which it is supported having been largely cut all round by the curious—not the reverentially—for chips or pieces of it. The table, which is a very plain, substantial one, is of oak, and about five feet in length by two and a half in breadth. Its antiquity is demonstrated by its workmanship, the nails by which the top is attached to the stands appearing in regular order on the surface of it. Poor Sir Francis Knollys, we fancy, if he had written that "story instead of a letter" he talked about, many a scene of it would have been described as taking place at this identical table. It was a sad charge his—sad for him, but still more sad for Mary. Here, during two long, sweet spring months, when the bright, glinting sun smiled down in beguiling blessedness over all the green rejoicing earth, peering even into her prison, with its old, old sweetness, how must that yet youthful heart have rankled under the unexpected restraint to which she was reduced. Often and often the substance of her thoughts must have been—
Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose clown the brae,
The hawthorn's budding in the glen,
And milkwhite is the slae;
The meanest hind in fair Scotland
May rove their sweets amang,
But I, the queen of all Scotland,
Maun lie in prison strang.
