hard by what is left of the ruins of the real Manor, where Wolsey
stayed that little while from death. The relics are broken walls,
higher here, lower there; with some Tudor fireplaces showing
through their hollow windows. What we saw in tolerable repair was
the tower of the Manor, or the lodge, and we drove to it across a
field, on a track made by farm carts, and presently kept by a dog
that showed his teeth in a grin not wholly of amusement at our
temerity. While we debated whether we had not better let the
driver get down and knock, a farmer-like man came to the door and
called the dog off. Then, in a rich North Country accent, he
welcomed us to his kitchen parlor, where his wife was peeling
potatoes for their midday dinner, and so led us up the narrow
stone stairs of the tower to the chambers where Mary miserably
passed those many long years of captivity.

The rooms were visibly restored in every point where they could
have needed restoration, but they were not ruthlessly or too
insistently restored. There was even an antique chair, but when
our guide was put on his honor as to whether it was one of the
original chairs he answered, "Well, if people wanted a chair!" He
was a rather charmingly quaint, humorous person, with that queer
conscience, and he did not pretend to be moved by the hard
inexorable stoniness of the place which had been a queen's prison
for many years. One must not judge it too severely, though:
bowers and prisons of that day looked much alike, and Mary Stuart
may have felt this a bower, and only hated it because she could
not get out of it, or anyhow break the relentless hold of that
Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury whose captive guest she was,
though she never ceased trying. We went up on the wide flat roof,
of lead or stone, whither her feet must have so often heavily