r in that most interesting part of the old building called
Queen Mary's Apartments. But a circumstance which lately happened
has conferred upon me greater privileges; so that, indeed, I might, I
believe, venture on the exploit of Chatelet, who was executed for
being found secreted at midnight in the very bedchamber of Scotland's
mistress.

It chanced that the good lady I have mentioned was, in the discharge of
her function, showing the apartments to a cockney from London--not one
of your quiet, dull, commonplace visitors, who gape, yawn, and
listen with an acquiescent "umph" to the information doled out by the
provincial cicerone. No such thing: this was the brisk, alert agent of a
great house in the city, who missed no opportunity of doing business,
as he termed it--that is, of putting off the goods of his employers,
and improving his own account of commission. He had fidgeted through the
suite of apartments, without finding the least opportunity to touch upon
that which he considered as the principal end of his existence. Even the
story of Rizzio's assassination presented no ideas to this emissary of
commerce, until the housekeeper appealed, in support of her narrative,
to the dusky stains of blood upon the floor.

"These are the stains," she said; "nothing will remove them from the
place: there they have been for two hundred and fifty years, and there
they will remain while the floor is left standing--neither water nor
anything else will ever remove them from that spot."

Now our cockney, amongst other articles, sold Scouring Drops, as they
are called, and a stain of two hundred and fifty years' standing was
interesting to him, not because it had been caused by the blood of a
queen's favourite, slain in her apartment, but because it offered
so admirable an opportunity to prove the efficacy of his unequalled
Detergent Elixir. Down on his knees went our friend, but neither in
horror nor devotion.

"Two hundred and fifty years, ma'am, and nothing take it away? Why, if
it had been five hundred, I have something in my pocket will fetch it
out in five minutes. D'ye see this elixir, ma'am? I will show you the
stain vanish in a moment."

Accordingly, wetting one end of his handkerchief with the all deterging
specific, he began to rub away on the planks, without heeding the
remonstrances of Mrs. Policy. She, good soul, stood at first in
astonishment, like the abbess of St. Bridget's, when a profane visitant
drank up the