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"This is the head of a traitor."

Whereupon Miss Stuart awoke, bathed in cold sweat, trembling, and when the nightmare was particularly vivid, screaming.

It is an interesting thought that a picture studied and pondered in her childhood by a Highland girl, and a story oft-repeated with dramatic power and force by an aged Highland nurse, should have changed the fortunes of the ancient English house of Calderton; should so have affected little Mary Stuart that, in turn and in time, she should have so affected a child, a small English boy, that his whole life should have been coloured thereby, and the destiny of his family changed.

As a twig is bent the tree will grow. This, presumably, in spite of the fact that there is nevertheless a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.

As an impressionable, highly strung, somewhat neurotic little girl, Miss Mary Stuart had been mere wax in the hands of the aged and dour Scots nurse who had also been her mother's nurse, and who had, in her old age, ruled that Stuart family with a rod of iron.