bog-oak,
was crisped about a fine forehead, which in his hours of ease her father
had been wont to call "Ailsa Craig."

"Oh, cover up Ailsa!" he would say often to tease her, "no girl can have
brains enough for a brow such as that!" And so, to please him, she had
trained her hair to lie low on her forehead, and then to ripple and
twist away gracefully to the nape of her neck, looking, as she turned
her head, like a charming young Medusa with deep green eyes of mystic
jade.

Such was Claire Agnew in the year of grace 1588, when she found herself
fatherless in that famous town of Blois, soon to be the terror, the joy,
and the hope of the world. Not that any description can do much to make
the personality of a fair woman leap from the printed page. Slowly and
only in part, it must disengage itself in word and thought and deed.

Like almost all lonely girls, Claire Agnew kept, in her father's tongue,
often in his very dialect, a journal of events and feelings and
imaginings--her "I-book," as she used to name it to herself.

That night as she curled herself up to sleep--it was almost morning--she
arranged in her mind how she would begin the very next day to write down
"all that happened, as well as" (because she was a girl) "all that she
hoped would happen."

The closely-packed script has come down to us, the writing fine, like
Greek cursive. The paper has been preserved marvellously, but the ink is
browned with time, and the letters so small and serried that they can
only be made out with a magnifying-glass.

"This is my I-Book, and I mean to be more faithful with myself
in writing it out; from this time forward--I shall write it
every night, no matter how tired I may be. Or--at least, the
next day, without the least failure. This shall have the force
of a vow!"

(Poor Claire--even thus have all diaries opened, since the first
Cave-man began to scratch the details of his Twelfth of August "bag" on
a mammoth-tusk! What a feeble proportion of these diaries have survived
even one fortnight!)

"Yes, I like him," Claire wrote, without prelude or the
formality of naming the him--"I like him, but I am glad he is
gone. Somehow, till I have thought and rested a while, I shall
feel safer with just our excellent Doctor Long, who preaches at
me much as Pastor Gras used to do at Geneva. Indeed, I see
little difference, except that the pastor was older, and did
not h