es of many angry men and yet have not been affrayed above
measour"--a most characteristic reply.

[Illustration: LOCHLEVEN]

Mary, however, had another purpose when she sent for Knox to Lochleven,
to help her in a strait. "She travailed with him earnestly two hours
before her supper that he would be the instrument to persuade the people
and principally the gentlemen of the West not to put hands to punish
(the priests) any more for the using of themselves in their religion as
pleased them." The Reformer perceiving her intention assured her that if
she would herself punish these malefactors, no one would interfere; but
he was immovable to any argument founded on the patent fact that he and
his party had lately called that the persecution of God's saints which
now they termed the execution of the law. Mary did not enter into this
controversy; she kept to her point--the vindication of her own
authority. "Will you," she said, "allow that they should take my sword
in their hand?" a question to which Knox had his answer plain and very
full, that the sword was God's, and that Jezebel's priests were not
spared by Elijah nor Agag by Samuel because the royal authority was in
their favour. It would be difficult to conceive anything more
exasperating than such an immovable front of dogmatism; and it was a
wonder of self-control that Mary should only have shown herself
"somewhat offended" when she broke off this hopeless argument, and
withdrew to supper. The Reformer thought he was dismissed; but before
sunrise next morning two several messengers came to his chamber to bid
him speak with the Queen before he took his departure. It was a May
morning, and no doubt there was soon much cheerful commotion in the air,
boats pushed forward to the landing steps with all that tinkle of water
and din and jar of the oars which is so pleasant to those who love the
lochs and streams--for Mary was bound upon a hawking expedition, and the
preacher's second audience was to be upon the mainland. The Queen must
have been up betimes while the mists still lay on the soft Lomonds, and
the pearly grey of the northern skies had scarcely turned to the glory
of the day: and probably the preacher who was growing old was little
disposed to join the gay party whose young voices and laughter he could
hear in his chamber, where he lay "before the sun"--setting out for the
farther shore with a day's pleasure before them. It would be interesting
to penetrate what w