Coach in those good old days."
"Did you ever see it?" I queried.
"No," she said, "but I have heard it rumble past, and I know those who have seen it, and many other things too."
"But tell me about the White Lady, please," I said.
"I will. Few people in those days cared to pass that haunted tower after nightfall. If they did they ran past it and also the Castle. Those new-fangled incandescent gas lamps have spoiled it all now. The White Lady was one of the Maries, one of the maids of honour to poor martyred Mary of Scotland, they said then. She was madly in love with the French poet and minstrel, 'Castelar,' and he was hopelessly in love, like many others, with Marie's lovely mistress, 'the Queen of Scots.'"
"Was she supposed to be the girl seen in the built-up haunted tower?" I asked.
"That I really can't say," she said. "There was a story often told in the old days that a beautiful embalmed girl in white lay in that tower, and it was there and near the Castle that she used to appear to the people. You know poor Castelar, the handsome minstrel, said and did some stupid things, and was beheaded at the Castle, and was probably buried near there. Get me from that shelf Whyte Melville's novel, 'The Queen's Maries.'"
I did as she bade me.
'Well, you will see there that the night before Castelar was to be beheaded kind Queen Mary sent one of her Maries, the one who loved Castelar, at her own special request to the Castle with her ring to offer him a pardon if he left this country for ever. This Marie did see Castelar, showed him the Queen's ring, and pleaded with him to comply, but he refused—he preferred death to banishment from his beloved Queen's Court, and the fair messenger left him obstinate in his dungeon. This faithful Marie paced up and down all that night before the Castle; then at dawn came the sound of a gun or culverin, a wreath of smoke floated out to sea, and Castelar was gone. Whyte Melville says she did not start, she did not shriek, nor faint, nor quiver, but she threw her hood back and looked wildly upward, gasping for air. Then as the rising sun shone on
