The youth and beauty and the sweet manner of the young Queen won all Scotch hearts to her. She was at once beset by royal suitors; the King of Sweden, the Archduke Charles, son of the Holy Roman Emperor, and Don Carlos, son of Philip II of Spain, all wanted to marry her. In the midst of the plots and plans of her statesmen the young Queen took matters into her own hands and married her cousin, the handsome Earl of Darnley, whom she loved with all the passion of her nature.

Though the Scotch people had longed to have their Queen home again they did not make her happy when she lived with them. Plots and counterplots surrounded her, the leaders of the Catholics and the Protestants were continually fighting over her, and the dashing Darnley proved a weak and vicious man. Mary did what she could to steer her course through these troubled waters, but she was met by treachery on every hand. At last she was betrayed by some powerful men who wished to be rid of her and to rule the kingdom as guardians for her infant son, Prince James. She was delivered over to the English, and charges were brought against her of having conspired against Queen Elizabeth. Her judges found her guilty; the English Queen, remembering how Mary had been proclaimed in France as Queen of England, turned a deaf ear to all pleas for mercy, and so Mary, the beautiful, heroic Queen of Scotland, came to her death on the scaffold. Like so many others who had been brought up in royal palaces in that glittering but cruel age she met a tragic fate not so much on account of her own acts as through the bitter hatreds of other people.

Mary's son became King James VI of Scotland, and when Queen Elizabeth died King James I of England. In France the two young brothers of her boy husband, Charles IX and Henry III, had met the same untimely deaths as that young King, and the throne passed to the valiant Henry of Navarre. The house of Guise had fallen, and the bloody civil wars were ending. There was little left of that gay court of France where Mary had seen such splendors as a girl. Like the thunder-storm that ends a summer day tragedy too often closed those pageants. So it had been with the life of the famous Scotch Queen, who had ruled all hearts as a girl in France.

VII
Pocahontas
The Girl of the Virginia Woods: 1595-1617

Deep snow covered the fields about the encampment of the Algonquin Indians on the banks of the river James. The snow had been falling for days during January, and made the long, low houses of bark and boughs look like so many great white ridges high above the ice-bound river. They were big houses, these "long houses" as they were called, each one large enough to hold twenty families. Each family had a compartment to itself, with sleeping bunks built against the walls, and curtains of deerskin to shield the family from the open passage which ran the length of the house. At different places in this passage fire-pits were built on the earth floor, and each pit gave heat enough to warm four Indian families and an opportunity for them to cook their meals. Some smoke went out at rude chimneys made in the roof, but much of it stayed in and filtered through to the different living-rooms. Each of these "long houses" was the home of from eighty to one hundred Indians.

The river James was called by the Indians the Pow-ha-tan, and the Algonquin tribe that lived upon its shores went by the same name. The tribe's chief settlement was the village of Wero-woco-moco, and here the famous old chief, called by the white men Pow-ha-tan but by the Indians Wa-bun-so-na-cook, was usually to be found. He had built there a "long house" for his own family, and at one end of it was the council room in which the various chiefs of the tribe met with him to discuss all matters relating to tribe affairs. Here they spent much of the time smoking about a fire-pit when the snow was falling and the hunting season at an end.

Before the council-house a group of boys were playing "snow-snake" and tumbling about in the drifts on a raw afternoon in January. Suddenly there appeared an Indian runner, coming noiselessly out of the woods and crossing the open space where the boys were playing. "It's Ra-bun-ta," cried one of them, and making a snowball threw it at the slim young Indian. Others took up the cry and pelted him with snowballs, while one named Nan-ta-qua-us dashed forward and tried to trip him with the knob-headed stick they had been using in their game of "snow-snake."

Ra-bun-ta, however, kicked the stick away and gave the boy a push which sent him sprawling. He dodged the snowballs and ran on without a word to the door of the old chief's house. Pushing the matting aside he dashed in and spied the chief sitting with other braves about a fire at the farther end of the house. Other Indians were lounging about nearer fires and children were playing up and down the passage. Some of these were turning somersaults in the open spaces between the fires while others were trying to balance on their heads and walk on their hands.

As the runner darted along the passage a girl, dressed in buckskin, came whirling along turning handsprings. Ra-bun-ta leaped to one side, but the girl's feet struck full against his breast, and with such force that he was thrown backward while the girl went tumbling to the ground. Both fell sprawling just clear of a fire-pit. There followed a great roar of laughter, the other children danced about in delight, while the chiefs, loving a rough joke, leaned back and ridiculed the upset messenger. "Knocked down by a girl! Oh, for shame, Ra-bun-ta!" called one as the young man slowly picked himself up. "You'd make a splendid brave," cried another.