The Queen'S Earrings.

The Queen's Earrings lie beneath the hearthstone of a farmhouse a little north of where the main trunk railway crosses the 40th degree of latitude.

Their story goes back to that day in 1568 on which Mary Stuart fleeing from the battle of Langside, came to the home of the Lenzies at Glenmayne Priory. Malcolm Lenzie, who was then Laird of Glenmayne, saved the Queen from falling into the hands of the Regent Murray, and set her upon the road to England, in gratitude for which she presented him with her earrings—two fire opals set in whorls of beaten gold—and promised that when she returned to Scotland, great power and wealth would be his.

She never returned, but for nearly three centuries afterwards the Lenzies remained lairds of Glenmayne, until in 1857 they were dispossessed by a moneylender named McWhin. Ardoch Lenzie, who inherited the estate only to find that his title had been signed away by his father, was persuaded by his wife Catherine to make a new start in New Zealand, and they now await the arrival of the ship “Druimuachdar,” commanded by Catherine's brother, Charles Barcle.