st Marches,
for justice, so Lord Buccleugh resolved to make a dash, and rescue the
raider, whom he loved. He got forty men (the English said two hundred,
but I know better), attacked the Castle, took it by assault, and carried
Willie, with fetters still dangling from his wrists, clear away across
the Eden and the roaring Esk, where none dared follow. When Queen
Elizabeth asked him afterward how he had dared, he said, "What is there
a brave man will not dare to do?"

It was not in the first dungeons that we heard the story of Willie
Armstrong, but later, in the part of the Castle which the public is not
allowed to see. We got there by climbing steep stairs into what are now
the soldiers' storerooms: and it's because they are storerooms that
they're kept so private. Once these rooms too were prisons; and behind
an immense door of oak, almost in darkness, are perfectly wonderful
wall-carvings cut into the reddish sandstone by prisoners: figures of
men and devils; scenes of history; initials woven into ingenious
monograms, Prince Charlie's among them, and hearts interlaced. I wish I
had lived in those days, and I wondered aloud if there were any girls
named Barribel then. Donald Douglas said yes; it was a very ancient and
well-loved Scottish name.

Stupid people in 1835 tore down most of the tower where Queen Mary was
imprisoned; but they were stopped before it was all gone, so luckily
there is a corner left, with a few graceful carvings on the outer wall.
And only three years ago a wonderful old table was found hidden away in
a dungeon which, it is thought, must have been used as her dining-table,
before she was whisked away from Carlisle to Bolton Castle in 1568. We
saw the table--very dark, very rough, looking like a prehistoric animal
turned to wood; and Donald Douglas said it was perhaps the oldest table
alive in England to-day--as old as King Edward's, and of the shape which
gave an idea later for Tudor tables. As he talked, I could almost see
Queen Mary sitting by this queer piece of furniture eating a poor meal,
and reading some book which might help her forget--perhaps idly
fingering the splendid black pearls which Mrs. James said were bought
last year in a tiny shop in Scotland, kept by descendants of a faithful
maid who went with her to the scaffold. And the shopkeeper, who thought
they were wax beads, lying in an old forgotten box, sold them for ten
shillings!

They found in another dungeon of the Castle, hid