arred on the outside. One other exit remained to be tested; a
larger door evidently communicating with another room or passage; that
also he found locked. He returned to the middle of the room and stood
there for a few moments with knitted brow.

"Trapped, Jamie, my lad! Trapped!" he muttered to himself. "Now what
object can my mother have in this? Does she expect by such childish
means to resume her authority over me? Does she hope that her third
husband shall rule Scotland in my name as did her second, with me a
prisoner? By Saint Andrew, no!"

The king seized a bench, raised it over his head and crashed it in
bits against the larger door with a noise that reverberated through
the castle.

"Open!" he cried; "open instantly!"

Then he paused, awaiting the result of his fury. Presently he thought
he heard light footsteps coming along the passage and an instant later
the huge key turned slowly in the lock. The door opened, and to his
amazement he saw standing before him with wide frightened eyes, his
guide, but dressed now as a lady.

"Madam," said the king sternly, "I ask you the meaning of this
pleasantry?"

"Pleasantry," echoed the girl, staring at him with her hand upon a
huge iron key, alert to run if this handsome maniac, strewn round by
the wreckage of the bench he had broken, attempted to lay hands on
her.

"Pleasantry?" she repeated; "that is a question I may well ask you.
Who are you, sir, and what are you doing here?"

"Who I am, and what I am doing here, you know very well, because you
brought me here. A change of garb does not change a well-remembered
face," and the king bowed to his visitor with a return of his
customary courtliness, now that his suspicions were allayed, for he
knew how to deal with pretty women. "Madam, there is no queen in
Scotland, but you are queen by right of nature, and though you doff
your gown, you cannot change your golden crown."

The girl's hand unconsciously went up to her ruddy hair, while she
murmured more to herself than to him,--

"This is some of Catherine's work."

"Catherine was your name in the forest, my lady, what is your name in
the castle?"

"Isabel is my name in castle and forest alike. You have met my twin
sister, Catherine. Why has she brought you here?"

"Like an obedient son, I am here at the command of my honourable
mother; and your sister--if indeed goddesses so strangely fair, and so
strangely similar can be two persons--has gone to acquaint