Chapter XVIII: Letter II: omits them in that place (paragraph 7); and only on her

second day of writing, in paragraph 18, does Mary's mind recur to Darnley's first brave words--"he spoke very bravely at the beginning," about his wrongs, "but in the end he returned again to his humility."

Here is proof positive that Crawford does not copy Letter II., but gives Darnley's words as reported to him by Darnley--words that Darnley was proud of,--while Mary, returning on the second day of writing to the topic, does not quote Darnley's brave words, but merely contrasts his speaking "very bravely at the beginning" with his pitiful and craven later submission; "he has ever the tear in his eye," with what follows. (_Mystery_, paragraph 12, p. 402.)

When we add to these and other proofs the strange lists of memoranda in the middle of the pages of the letter, and the breach in internal chronology which was apparently caused by Mary's writing, on her second day, on the clean verso of a page on the other side of which she had written some lines during her first night in Glasgow; when we add the dramatic changes of her mood, and the heart-breaking evidence of a remorse not stifled by lawless love, we seem compelled to believe that she wrote the whole of Letter II.; that none of it is forged.

In _The Mystery of Mary Stuart_ the evidence for an early forged letter was presented with confidence; the interpolation of forgeries based on Crawford's declaration was more dubiously suggested. That position the writer now abandons. It may be asked why, after being with Wood on the 11th of June, did Lennox still rely on Moray's version of Mary's letter? The reply may be that the Scots versions were regarded as a great secret; that Lennox was a married man; and that though Lennox in June knew about Mary's letters, doubtless from Wood, or from common report (Bishop Jewell in a letter of August 1567 mentions that he had heard of them), yet Wood did not show to him the Scots copies. Lennox quotes