"pondered refuge from his toil"
we were content to house ourselves in the hotel at Aberfoyle. We chose the one called "Baillie Nicol Jarvie," because this is all Rob Roy country. In truth we felt at home with the Baillie, and with the Forth flowing in front of the town, and the old clachan of Aberfoyle marked by a few stones.
In the late afternoon of this already full day we found there was a coach leaving for Lake Menteith which would return in the late twilight, too late for dinner, but Baillie Nicol was kind and we could have supper on our return. So we were off to Menteith, and to an old memory, reaching back to the daughter of James Fitz James. But at this far distance she seemed to belong to an older day.
Menteith is a little lake, a fragment of the abundant blue of Scotland's waters, and it is surrounded by hills that are heather clad; only the southern shore is wooded. Near the southern shore lies anchored the Island of Inchmahone—isle of rest—where once stood a priory, and now only a few arches keep the shadowy memory in their green covert. The stones of the dead lie about, for the Isle of Rest was an island of burial.
Hither came Mary Queen of Scots, when she was five years old, here for an island of refuge, since the defeat at Pinkie meant that Henry VIII was nearer and nearer the little life that stood between him and Scotland's throne—
"O ye mariners, mariners, mariners,
That sail upon the sea,
Let not my father nor mother to wit,
The death that I maun die!"
She came with her four Maries, and together they went to France, together they made merry and made love at the French court, and, all unscathed, they returned fifteen years later—
"Yestreen the queen had four Maries,
To-night she'll hae but three;
There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beatoun,
And Marie Carmichael and me—"
It was as though she were lost from the world, as we went back in the dimming day; almost the only time I have ever lost her since historic memories came to be my own personal memories. And yet, I knew I should find her again. Mary is one of the women who do not go into exile once they have made harbour in the affections.
Next day, half by a hill-road and half by a foot-path, with mountains whose names were poems evoking the one poem of the region, with the far view, and with birches closing in the highway now and then, and now and then opening into a near-far view of glen and stream and strath and path, we came to—The Trossachs.