ached to that rite as unscriptural, precisely as if
the Apostles had described in full the method to be employed.

It is probable that it was the progress of Knox through the West on this
occasion which encouraged and stimulated the gentlemen of that district,
always the most strenuous of Reformers, the descendants of the Lollards,
the forefathers of the Whigs, to take the law into their own hands in
respect to those wandering and dispossessed priests who, encouraged by
the example and support of the Queen, began to appear here and there in
half-ruined chapels or parish churches to set up a furtive altar and say
a mass, at peril if not of their lives at least of their liberty. When
Knox returned to Edinburgh the Queen was at Lochleven, not then a prison
but a cheerful seclusion, with the air blowing fresh from the pleasant
loch, and the plains of Kinross and Fife all broad and peaceful before
her, for the open-air exercises in which she delighted. She sent for
Knox to this retirement and threw herself upon his aid and charity to
stop these proceedings. It was not the first time they had met. Two
previous interviews had taken place, in the first of which Mary gaily
encountered the Stern author of the "Blast" upon that general subject,
and won from him a blessing at the end of the brief duel in which there
was no bitterness. The second had been on the occasion when Knox, in the
pulpit, objected to the dancing and festivities of Holyrood; but still
was of no very formidable character. I cannot doubt that Mary found
something very humorous and original in the obstinate and dauntless
prophet whom she desired to come to her and tell her privately when he
objected to her conduct, and not to make it the subject of his
sermons--a very natural and apparently gracious request: from which Knox
excused himself, however, as having no time to come to her chamber door
and whisper in her ear. "I cannot tell even what other men will judge of
me," he said, "that at this time of day am absent from my buke, and
waiting upon the Court."--"Ye will not always be at your buke," said the
Queen. And it was on this second interview that as he left the presence
with a composed countenance some foolish courtier remarked of Knox that
he was not afraid, and elicited the answer, noble and dignified if a
little truculent and exaggerated after an encounter not at all solemn,
"Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray me? I have looked
in the fac