While Mr. George and the boys were in Edinburgh, they went one day to visit the Palace of Holyrood, and they were extremely interested in what they saw there.  This palace stands, as has already been stated, on a plain, not far from the foot of a long slope which leads up to the castle.

As long as Scotland remained an independent kingdom, the Palace of Holyrood was the principal residence of the royal family.  Queen Mary was the last of the Scottish sovereigns ­that is, she was the last that reigned over Scotland alone ­for her son, James VI., succeeded to the throne of England, as well as to that of Scotland.  The reason of this was, that the English branch of the royal line failed, and he was the next heir.  So he became James the First of England, while he still remained James the Sixth of Scotland.  And from this time forward the kings of England and Scotland were one.

Mary, therefore, was the last of the exclusively Scottish line.  She lived at Holyrood as long as she was allowed to live any where in peace; and on account of certain very peculiar circumstances which occurred just before the time that she left the palace, her rooms were never occupied after she left them, but have remained to this day in the same state, and with almost the same furniture in them as at the hour when she went away.  These rooms are called Queen Mary’s rooms, and almost every body who visits Scotland goes to see them.

The reason why the rooms which Mary occupied in the Palace of Holyrood were left as they were, and never occupied by any other person after Mary went away, was principally that a dreadful murder was committed there just before Mary quitted them.  This, of course, connected very gloomy associations with the palace; and while great numbers of persons were eager to go and see the place where the man was killed, few would be willing to live there.  The consequence has been, that the apartments have been vacant of occupants ever since, though they are filled all the time with a perpetually flowing stream of visitors.  The circumstances of the murder were very extraordinary.  Mr. George explained the case briefly to the boys during their visit to the palace, as we shall presently see.

On leaving the hotel they went for a little way along Prince’s Street.  On one side of the street there was a row of stores, hotels, and other such buildings, as in Broadway, in New York.  On the other side extended the long and deep valley which lies between Prince’s Street and Castle Hill.  The valley was crossed by various bridges, and beyond it were to be seen the backs of the lofty houses of High Street, rising tier above tier to a great height, looking, as has already been said, like a range of stupendous cliffs, lifting their crests to the sky.

There were scarcely any buildings on the valley side of the street, except one or two edifices of an ornamental or public character.  One of these was the celebrated monument to Sir Walter Scott.

The party paused a short time before this monument, and then went on.  They passed by one or two bridges that led across the valley, and also, at one place, a broad flight of steps, that went down, with many turnings, from landing to landing, to the railway station in the valley.  At last they came to the bridge where they were to cross the valley.  They stopped on the middle of the bridge, to look down.  They saw streets far below them, and a market, and trains of railway carriages coming and going, and beyond, at some distance, an extensive range of pleasure grounds, with ladies and gentlemen rambling about them, and groups of children playing.  These pleasure grounds extended some way up the slope of the Castle Hill.  Indeed, the upper walks lay close along under the foot of the precipices on which the castle walls were built above.

After passing the bridge, Mr. George and the boys went on, until, at length, they came to High Street; which is the great central street of ancient Edinburgh, leading from the palace and abbey on the plain up to the castle on the hill.  There, if they had turned to the right, they would have gone up to the castle; but they turned to the left, and so descended towards the palace, on the plain.

At length they reached the foot of the descent, and then, at a turn in the street, the palace came suddenly into view.

There was a broad paved area in front of it.  In the centre of the building was a large arched doorway, with a sentry box on each side.  At each of these sentry boxes stood a soldier on guard.  All the royal palaces of England are guarded thus.  There was a cab, that had brought a company of visitors to see the castle, standing near the centre of the square, by a great statue that was there.  Another cab drove up just at the time that Mr. George arrived, and a party of visitors got out of it.  All the new comers went in under the archway together.  The soldiers paid no attention to them whatever.

The arched passage way led into a square court, with a piazza extending all around it.  The visitors turned to the left, and walked along under the piazza till they came to the corner, where there was a little office, and a man at the window of it to give them tickets.  They paid sixpence apiece for their tickets.

After getting their tickets they walked on under the piazza a little way farther, till at length they came to a door, and a broad stone staircase, leading up into the palace, and they all went in and began to ascend the stairs.

At the head of the stairs they passed through a wide door, which led into a room where they saw visitors, that had gone in before them, walking about.  They were met at the door by a well-dressed man, who received them politely, and asked them to walk in.

“This, gentlemen,” said he, “was Lord Darnley’s audience chamber.  That,” he continued, pointing through an open door at the side, “was his bedroom; and there,” pointing to another small door on the other side, “was the passage way leading up to Queen Mary’s apartments.”

Having said this, the attendant turned away to answer some questions asked him by the other visitors, leaving Mr. George and the boys, for the moment, to look about the rooms by themselves.

The rooms were large, but the interior finishing of them was very plain.  The walls were hung with antique-looking pictures.  The furniture, too, looked very ancient and venerable.

“Who was Lord Darnley?” asked Waldron.

“He was Queen Mary’s husband,” replied Mr. George.

“Then he was the king, I suppose,” said Waldron.

“No,” replied Mr. George, “not at all.  A king is one who inherits the throne in his own right.  When the throne descends to a woman, she is the queen; but if she marries, her husband does not become king.”

“What is he then?” said Waldron.

“Nothing but the queen’s husband,” said Mr. George.

“Hoh!” exclaimed Waldron, in a tone of contempt.

“He does not acquire any share of the queen’s power,” continued Mr. George, “because he marries her.  She is the sovereign alone afterwards just as much as before.”

“And so I suppose,” said Rollo, “that when a king marries, the lady that he marries does not become a queen.”

“Yes,” said Mr. George, “the rule does not seem to work both ways.  A lady who marries a king is always called a queen; though, after all, she acquires no share of the royal power.  She is a queen in name only.  But let us hear what this man is explaining to the visitors about the paintings and the furniture.”

So they advanced to the part of the room where the attendant was standing, with two or three ladies and gentlemen, who were looking at one of the old pictures that were hanging on the wall.  It was a picture of Queen Mary when she was fifteen years old.  The dress was very quaint and queer, and the picture seemed a good deal faded; but the face wore a very sweet and charming expression.

“I think she was a very pretty girl,” whispered Waldron in Rollo’s ear.

“She was in France at that time,” said the attendant, “and the picture, if it is an original, must have been painted there, and she must have brought it with her to Scotland, on her return from that country.  She brought a great deal with her on her return.  There were several vessel loads of furniture, paintings, &c.  The tapestry in the bedroom was brought.  It was wrought at the Gobelins.”

Mr. George went into the bedroom, to look at the tapestry.  Two sides of the room were hung with it.

“It looks like a carpet hung on the walls,” said Waldron.

“Yes,” said Mr. George; “a richly embroidered carpet.”

The figures on the tapestry consisted of groups of horsemen, elegantly equipped and caparisoned.  The horses were prancing about in a very spirited manner.  The whole work looked very dingy, and the colors were very much faded; but it was evident that it must have been very splendid in its day.

After looking at the tapestry, and at the various articles of quaint and queer old furniture in this room, the company followed the attendant into another apartment.

“This,” said he, “is the room where Lord Darnley, Ruthven, and the rest, held their consultation and formed their plans for the murder of Rizzio; and there is the door leading to the private stairway where they went up.  You cannot go up that way now, but you will see where they came out above when you go up into Queen Mary’s apartments.”

“Let us go now,” said Waldron.

“Well,” said Mr. George, “and then we can come into these rooms again when we come down.”

So Mr. George and the boys walked back, through Lord Darnley’s rooms, to the place where they came in.  Here they saw that the same broad flight of stone stairs, by which they had come up from the court below, continued to ascend to the upper stories.  There was a painted inscription on a board there, too, saying, “To Queen Mary’s apartments,” with a hand pointing up the staircase.  So they knew that that was the way they must go.

As they went up, both Rollo and Waldron asked Mr. George to explain to them something about the murder, so that they might know a little what they were going to see.

“Well,” said Mr. George, “I will.  Let us sit down here, and I will tell you as much as I can tell in five minutes.  Really to understand the whole affair, you would have to read as much as you could read in a week.  And I assure you it is an exceedingly interesting and entertaining story.

“Darnley, you know, was the queen’s husband.  Her first husband was the young Prince of France; but he died before Queen Mary came home.  So that when she came home she was a widow; very young, and exceedingly beautiful.  There is a very beautiful painting of her, I am told, in the castle.”

“Let us go and see it,” said Waldron.

“To-morrow,” said Mr. George.

“After Queen Mary had been in Scotland some little time,” continued Mr. George, “she was married again to this Lord Darnley.  He was an English prince.  The whole story of her first becoming acquainted with Darnley, and how the marriage was brought about, is extremely interesting; but I have not time now to tell it to you.

“After they were married they lived together for a time very happily; but at length some causes of difficulty and dissension occurred between them.  Darnley was not contented to be merely the queen’s husband.  He wanted, also, to be king.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Waldron.

“I should have thought,” said Rollo, “that Mary would have been willing that he should be king.”

“Very likely she might have been willing herself,” said Mr. George, “but her people were not willing.  There were a great many powerful nobles and chieftains in the kingdom, and about her court, and they took sides, one way and the other, and there was a great deal of trouble.  It is a long story, and I can’t tell you half of it, now.  What made the matter worse was, that Darnley, finding he could not have every thing his own way, began to be very harsh and cruel in his treatment of Mary.  This made Mary very unhappy, and caused her to live a great deal in retirement, with a few near and intimate friends, who treated her with kindness and sympathy.

“One of these was David Rizzio, the man who was murdered.  He was one of the officers of the court.  His office was private secretary.  He was a great deal older than Mary, and it seems he was an excellent man for his office.  He used to write for the queen when it was necessary, and perform other such duties; and as he was very gentle and kind in his disposition, and took a great interest in every thing that concerned the queen, Mary became, at last, quite attached to him, and considered him as one of her best friends.  At last Lord Darnley and his party became very jealous of him.  They thought that he had a great deal too much influence over the queen.  It was as if he were the prime minister, they said, while they, the old nobles of the realm, were all set aside, as if they were of no consequence at all.  So they determined to kill him.

“They formed their plot in the room below, where we have just been.  It was in the evening.  Mary was at supper that night in a little room in the tower up above, where we are now going.  There were two or three friends with her.  The men went up the private stairway, and burst into the little supper room, and killed Rizzio on the spot.”

“Let us go up and see the place,” said Waldron.

So Mr. George rose, and followed by the boys, he led the way into Queen Mary’s apartments.