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Herself a Stuart, the old woman was inordinately proud of the established fact that her ancestors, near and remote, had been King's men from generation to generation, and had, in their time and turn, died under Lawrence, Havelock, and Outram in India; under Moore and Wellington in the Peninsula; at Waterloo; and back even to Flodden and Falkirk; that one of them had come South with King James V of Scotland, one of whose sons and grandsons had fought for that King's son and grandson, Charles I and Charles II.

And most sweetly grim, best enjoyed tribute of all, had not her very own great-grandfather died bloodily at Culloden? Had not old Nurse Stuart, when herself a girl, made the then difficult journey from Inverness to Culloden battlefield, and sat her down upon the stone marked with the name, Stuart, and wept--reserving a tear to drop upon those other pregnant stones marked respectively Mackenzie, Macdonald, Maclean, MacPherson....

And how frequently had she had young Mary Stuart weeping, by the time she had finished that dark tale, picturing the clansmen dying for their rightful King as their fathers had done before them, broken squares and groups of claymore-wielding Highland men dying where they stood, and being buried, by Clans, where they lay.