her bare head, Marie's raven hair was all streaked and patched with grey. When Mary Stuart fled to England, this faithful Marie, now no more needed, became a nun in St Andrews. Look at page 371 of Whyte Melville's book," she said. So I read—"It was an early harvest that year in Scotland, but e'er the barley was white, Marie had done with nuns and nunneries, vows and ceremonies, withered hopes and mortal sorrows, and had gone to that place where the weary heart can alone find the rest it had so longed for at last."
The pathetic and the comic often go together. Just at this interesting point a cat sprang suddenly up and upset a cup of tea in the lap of my genial hostess. This created a diversion. Old ladies are apt to wander, which is annoying. She got clean away from her subject for a bit. She asked me if I knew Captain Robert Marshall, who wrote plays and "The Haunted Mayor." I said I knew Bob well, and that he was an old Madras College boy.
She then wanted to know if I knew how to pronounce the name of Mr Travis's American putter, and if Mr Low or I had ever tried it. She also wanted to know if I knew anything of the new patent clock worked on gramophone principles which shouted the hours instead of striking them.
Having answered all these queries to her satisfaction, and taken another cup of senna—I mean tea—I got her back to the White Lady.
"Oh, yes, my dear," she said, "I saw her, I and some friends. A lot of us had been out at Kinkell Braes one afternoon and stayed there long past the time allowed us. It was almost dark, and we scuttled up the brae from the Harbour rather frightened. Just near the turret light we saw the lady gliding along the top of the old Abbey wall. She was robed in a grey white dress with a veil over her head. She had raven black hair, and a string of beads hanging from her waist. We all huddled together, with our eyes and mouths wide open, and watched the figure. 'It's a girl sleep-walking,' I murmured. 'It's a bride,' whispered another. 'Oh! she'll fall,' said a little boy, grasping my arm. But she did not. She went inside the parapet wall at the Haunted Tower and vanished completely.
