BOOK II

ACCORDING TO BARRIE

I

When the Great Surprise happened, Mr. Norman and I had just been having

a very nice talk. I'd never expected to know a real author, and of

course I wanted to talk about him, but he would talk about me instead.

He asked me questions in quite a different way from his sister's, though

I can't put the difference into words. I can only feel it. I know his

way made me want to answer him, and hers made me want to slap her. That

is queer, because she was not rude, but soft and gentle.

Among other things that Mr. Norman teased me to tell, was about the

silly stories which I've always been scribbling secretly ever since the

time when I had to print because I hadn't learned to write. He said that

he would like to see them, but I told him they were torn up, even the

last one, which I stuffed into the chimney in my room before I ran away

from Grandma's. Then he said I must write another, and he would help me.

I _was_ excited when he went on to say that people who took to writing

like ducks to water when they were almost babies, without any one

advising them, generally had real talent. This made me wild to begin

writing again at once, and I envied him because he and Mrs. West had

planned out a story all about their motor trip in Scotland. I thought it

would be the greatest fun to write of things that were actually

happening; but he explained that he wasn't going to bring in the real

people or what they did or said, only the scenery and perhaps a few of

the adventures, glorified a little. I told him that I should enjoy even

more writing things exactly as they were in life; then he argued that if

one did it in that way it wouldn't be a story, but a kind of diary.

Perhaps this _is_ a kind of diary, but I feel as if I must write it,

especially as, because of what happened while we were talking, Mr.

Norman's story can't be written after all. At least it can't be written

about this trip and this beautiful car.

That prim maid Moore, who looks as if she'd had a rush of teeth to the

head, minced to the door of the summer-house where we were sitting, and

called us to luncheon. Of course that interrupted our conversation, but

Mr. Norman said it must be "continued in our next," like a serial story

and we'd make the most of our time between Carlisle and Edinburgh.

"You'll let me help you all I can, won't you, Miss MacDonald?" he asked.

I said "Yes," and thanked him; and then he exclaimed, "Let's shake hands

on the compact."

I didn't know precisely what a compact was, but I shook hands, because

most things which begin with "com" are pleasant. Just as we were giving

the last shake, Mr. Somerled appeared, and I felt myself getting red,

because his eyes looked so blue and fierce, as if he were vexed about

something.

"We're striking a bargain," Mr. Norman explained. "Miss MacDonald has

promised to let me help her up the ladder of fame as an author. How many

days are you going to give us together in your motor-car?"

"My dear chap, I'm sorry to tell you that Mrs. West and I have just had

a row," said Mr. Somerled, "and she's backed out of the trip."

I've always laughed when I've heard or read the expression, "his face

fell"; but faces do fall. Mr. Norman's chin seemed suddenly to grow

inches longer. "Backed out of the trip!" he echoed, as if he couldn't

believe his ears.

"Yes. I asked her to reconsider, but made a mess of it. I fear there's

no hope that she'll change her mind. She says you and she will take your

trip alone."

I quite wished that he'd invite Mr. Norman to break off from his sister,

but he didn't. Perhaps that would not have been etiquette. I don't know

anything about such things. The etiquette book Heppie lent me to read

once was too uninteresting, worse than Hannah More.

Mr. Norman's face went on falling. His sister would not have been

complimented if she had seen it.

"In fact," Mr. Somerled added, "I'm afraid this is good-bye. Mrs. West

doesn't expect"--he stopped and laughed a little--"doesn't expect Miss

MacDonald and me to stay to luncheon."

I see now that it was horrid of me, but I clapped my hands, and cried

out, "How thrilling!" Mr. Norman turned red. I hope he didn't think I

was ungrateful. It wasn't that at all which made me clap my hands. It

was being coupled with Mr. Somerled in the row, and wondering what was

going to become of us both.

"It's like Adam and Eve being turned out of Paradise, by the Angel with

the Flaming Sword," I said, to make things better; and perhaps it did,

for they both laughed this time, but it was very queer laughter. If

Heppie had heard _me_ laugh like that, she would have accused me of

hysterics. But it was good for Mr. Norman, and stopped his face from

falling. He stammered regrets and apologies and suggestions, and Mr.

Somerled seemed upset, too, though not excited, like Mr. Norman and me.

He went into the house to collect our belongings, and I _was_ thankful

not to meet Mrs. West. She kept out of our way, but one of the servants

helped Mr. Somerled, who has no man to look after him, and another, not

that horrid Moore, offered to help me, but I said, "No, thank you." I

knew she would make fun of my bundle to the others afterward. All the

maids have stick-out teeth in this house, as if they'd been engaged on

purpose, and somehow it makes them seem formidable, like having ogresses

to do your packing.

Fancy Mr. Somerled, in the midst of his worry, remembering that I might

want to give money to Mrs. West's servants! He doesn't seem the sort of

man who would think of little things like that, but I begin to see

already that it isn't easy to guess what he is like really, unless he

chooses to let one do so. As we were on the way to the house, he said to

me in a low tone, "Here's an installment of what I owe you for your

brooch," and quickly he slipped a lot of gold and silver into my hand,

making my fingers shut round the coins.

"But you haven't got the brooch yet," I whispered back.

"I'll trust you," he said, in an absent-minded way, as already his

thoughts had rushed off to something else. And no wonder!

I gave a ten-shilling piece to the maid, with a grand air which must

have impressed her, because she treated me almost respectfully after

that, and secretly smuggled down my ugly bundle to the front gate,

where, in a few minutes more, Mr. Somerled's big car came to fetch us

away. Some one must have been sent to fetch it, and there were a few

crumbs on the chauffeur's coat, which made me fancy he'd been called

away in the midst of his luncheon, poor man. He must have been

surprised, but he had that ineffable marble-statue look which I've

noticed on the faces of grand coachmen driving high-nosed old ladies in

glittering carriages through the streets of Carlisle. Heppie says that

the true test of a well-trained servant is to show no emotion in any

circumstances whatever; so I suppose this big chauffeur, whose name is

Vedder, must be very well trained indeed. He is a strange looking man,

but very smart, and, being a Cockney, carefully puts all his "h's" in

the wrong place. If he forgets to do this, he goes back and pronounces

the word over again. He travelled to America from London to be Mr.

Somerled's coachman years ago, and then he learned how to drive a

motor-car and be a mechanic, because he couldn't bear to have his master

tearing over the earth with any one else. Mr. Somerled told me all this,

coming from the railway station, when he was bringing me to Moorhill

Farm.

Mr. Norman saw us off, and was very cast down as Mr. Somerled's luggage

was put on the car, but he was so loyal to his sister, that he would not

say much except, "I'm sorry!" over and over again.

I was afraid that Mr. Somerled would drive (as he told me the night

before he liked driving his own car) and leave me sitting alone in the

immense gray automobile, which has a glass front and a top you can put

up or down. But to my joy he got in beside me, and let Vedder take the

wheel in those large, well-made hands which carry out the marble-statue

idea. I had no notion where we were going; and Vedder drove so slowly

that I guessed he was expecting further instructions.

As soon as we were safely away from the gate I asked the question

burning on my tongue: "You _won't_ take me to Grandma?"

"I thought you trusted me as I trusted you," was the only answer Mr.

Somerled condescended to make.

Suddenly I saw myself a selfish pig. "I do trust you," I insisted. "But

I _ought_ to want to go back of my own accord, rather than let you give

up--things--for me. I'm nothing to you----"

"You're Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's daughter, and--er--a fellow-being."

"If it comes to that, I suppose a worm's a fellow-being. But this worm

has turned, and would as soon cross the path of a perfectly ravenous

early bird as go to its grandmother. So I won't do that, even for your

sake, though you've been so kind; but I wish you'd drop me at the

station where you found me, and let me travel to Edinburgh by train. I

can wait there for mother----"

"Nonsense!" he broke in; a word he seems devoted to, as he has already

used it several times to pound down some suggestion of mine as if he

were breaking it with a hammer. He has the air of a man used to getting

his own way with the world, anyhow with women, and I can't think it good

for him; though Mrs. West's one idea apparently is to do what will

please him, not fussily, but gently and sweetly; so that must be what

men like. I should pity him if he lived with Grandma! I suppose it is my

living with her for so long which makes me feel like going against

strong, dictatorial people, just to see what they will do. With him,

that plan would be exciting. It is ungrateful of me, but I long to

contradict him about something, it doesn't matter what, and try my

naughty little strength against his, like a headstrong, conceited mouse

pitting itself against a lion.

I had no inclination to contradict or fight with Mr. Norman. But he has

pathetic, wistful eyes, asking for kindness, whereas Mr. Somerled's look

bored with things, as if he needed waking up.

I thought these thoughts while he went on to remind me more gently, that

he'd promised to motor me to Edinburgh, and that he had quite a strong

weakness for not breaking promises.

"But I give you back this one unbroken, not even cracked," said I. "So

that's different."

"I don't choose to take it back," said he. "You'll humiliate me if you

refuse to go to Edinburgh in my car--with a competent chaperon, of

course."

"A chaperon! My gracious!" I couldn't help laughing. "Aren't you

chaperon enough--a great big, grown-up man?"

"I suppose you think me very old," said he; "and so I am, compared to

you; but I'm afraid--no, I'm _not_ afraid--to tell you the truth, I'm

extremely glad that I haven't come yet to the chaperon age."

"What is the chaperon age for a man?" I inquired.

"Seventy."

"And you won't be that for a long time," I added dreamily, wondering how

old he really was.

For an instant his eyes waked up thoroughly, and he looked as if he were

in a fury; then he burst out laughing. But his brown face was rather red

when he asked if I would mind mentioning my honest impression of his

age.

I thought a minute, and then said that perhaps he might be--well, nearly

thirty. He laughed again, and seemed relieved, but wanted to know if

thirty struck me as old or young. I didn't know what to answer, not to

be impolite, so I said presently that I had always thought of thirty as

being the year when you were not middle-aged yet, though anything that

happened to you _after_ your thirtieth birthday couldn't matter.

"Still," I went on, "you look young. Only, there's something important

and decided about you, as if you must have been grown up for a long

time."

"Not to deceive you, I'm thirty-four," he said. "Now, no doubt, you'll

consider me a sort of Ancient Mariner. Perhaps that's all the better."

"Looking at you, I can't, even if it would be better," I had to confess.

"You're so alive--so strong, so--almost violent. I can't somehow imagine

that you've ever been younger, or that you can ever grow older."

Just then, when we'd forgotten the chaperon part of our conversation,

the car slowed down and Vedder made a kind of signal of distress. Mr.

Somerled put his head out through the open window, whereupon I think

Vedder must have reminded him that we were coming into town, wanting to

know what he was to do next. In came Mr. Somerled's smooth black head

again, and he glared at me in a kind of amused desperation. "You must

know some one who would act as your chaperon for a few days, at a good

salary--sent home by train when we'd done with her. That ex-governess or

nurse of yours, you told me about."

"Oh, Heppie wouldn't be found _dead_ leaving Grandma," said I. "Not that

she loves her. Neither does a mouse love a cat, when it won't try to

escape. It keeps running back and being polite with its eyes bulging

out."

"There must be somebody else. Think. Has your grandmother any friends?"

"Dear me, no. She'd scorn it. Only a few acquaintances and a relation or

two, whom she snubs when they come to see her and scolds if they don't.

They wouldn't--but, oh, perhaps Mrs. James _might_. I wonder?"

"Where does Mrs. James live?"

I told him quickly that it was in a little sort of cul-de-sac street

called Flemish Passage, not far from English Street, where Heppie and I

sometimes look at the shops; and I was going on to say more about it and

about Mrs. James, but before I'd time to draw another breath, Mr.

Somerled grabbed up a speaking tube and was talking through it. "Find

Flemish Passage near English Street, and I'll tell you where to stop,"

he addressed the back of Vedder's massive head.

"It's an old curiosity shop, and she keeps it," I hurried to explain,

but that didn't seem to matter to Mr. Somerled.

"I hope you like the lady's society," was all he said.

"I love her, and she's an angel, but a very peculiar angel; and Grandma

doesn't call her a lady, so perhaps you won't," I broke the news to him.

"I daresay your grandmother wouldn't have called my mother a lady," he

replied coolly. "She was an angel, and the cleverest, most gracious

woman I ever knew or expect to know." I did like him for saying this.

And something told me that, in spite of his domineering way with me, he

wouldn't be one to put on high and mighty airs with Mrs. James, as

Grandma does.

English Street, of course, is the main street of Carlisle and runs north

to William Rufus's Castle that stands looking over the moors toward the

border, eight miles away. Grandma never would let Heppie take me into

the Castle, because it's turned into barracks now, and swarming with

soldiers. She said that her father called soldiers Men of Blood, and

seemed to think that ought to put me off from wishing to go in, but it

didn't a bit, rather the other way round. I love soldiers in books, and

should like to meet some.

It was near the old Citadel of Henry VIII, where the towers have been

turned into court-houses, that we had to turn off, and it is there that

English Street really begins. It didn't take Vedder long to find Flemish

Passage--which Mrs. James says is named after the Flemish masons William

Rufus brought over to make the Castle, men who settled down afterward to

live in Carlisle. Maybe there were Flemish houses on the spot in those

days--who knows? I love to think there were; and though there isn't a

trace of anything half so ancient as William, Flemish Passage can't have

changed much from what it must have been in the Middle Ages. Even the

people who live there are mostly old, and as the big gray car turned

into the small, quiet cul-de-sac, elderly heads appeared at antique

windows of all the medieval houses. I should think nothing so exciting

had happened in Flemish Passage at all events since Carlisle surrendered

to Prince Charlie. The car looked enormous, as if it were a dragon

swelling to twice its size in rage because it knew there would be no

room for it to turn round when it wanted to get out.

Mrs. James house used to be like the others till she had the two front

windows thrown into one, and took to keeping a shop. The way she

happened to do that was just as it was with Miss Mattie in that darling

"Cranford" I found with father's name in it; only Mrs. James, of course,

was married and Miss Mattie wasn't. I wanted to tell Mr. Somerled about

her, and how her husband, a distant cousin of Grandma's, was the doctor

that couldn't cure my father. Mrs. James herself wasn't a cousin, and

wasn't even of the north, so Grandma never thought of her, as she has no

opinion of southern people. Mrs. James was Devonshire, and (in Grandma's

eyes) a _mésalliance_ for Richard James. He lodged with the Devonshire

girl's mother when he was a medical student in London, Heppie told me

once; and even Heppie puts on superior airs with Mrs. James, whom she

considers a feckless creature. I have an idea Heppie knew the doctor

before he met his wife, and he was her One Romance; so naturally she

thinks the "James Mystery" wouldn't have happened if he had married her

instead. Of course, though, it could never have occurred to _any one_ to

marry Heppie, whereas Mrs. James must always have been a darling and

very pretty in her fluffy way. Grandma says the "James Mystery" (as it

seemed it was called in the newspapers at the time, when I was very

small) never was a mystery except for "fools or sensation-mongers." I

heard her speak those very words to poor Mrs. James, who has always

called on Grandma once a month, ever since I can remember, though

Grandma does nothing but make herself disagreeable and say things to

hurt Mrs. James feelings, knowing that her one dream of happiness is in

believing her husband still lives.

Nobody else believes this, Heppie has told me; because Doctor James had

a motive for not wishing to live, "apart from any disappointment in his

home life." After he didn't cure my father there was another case which

he was supposed not to have understood. I don't know exactly what

happened, for my questions weren't encouraged; but he operated on the

person when he ought not, or else didn't operate when he ought; anyhow

the person was a high personage, so there was trouble, and then might

have been a legal inquiry if Doctor James hadn't gone one day to

Seascale, and from there disappeared. His hat was found on the beach,

and a coat, and though his body was never recovered, all the world

except his wife felt sure he had drowned himself on purpose. As for her,

she is perfectly certain that he is alive, and she hopes to this day

that some time he will come to her, or else send for her to go to him.

He disappeared or died, or whatever it was, seventeen years ago when I

was almost a baby; and he and Mrs. James weren't so very young even

then: but because he admired what he called her "baby face," she has

always tried desperately to keep her looks that he mayn't find her

changed when (she doesn't say "if") they meet again. It is the most

pathetic thing I ever heard of, because in spite of all the troubles she

has had, enough to make her old twice over, she has never lost gayety or

courage. Grandma and Heppie think it wicked and frivolous of her not to

"bow to God's will," but I think she is a marvel, and I love every

little funny way and trick she has.

I don't know Mrs. James well enough to call her my friend, because I

don't often see her, and we've never been left alone together when she's

called on Grandma; Heppie took me to her house only once, just after

she'd grown poor through the breaking of some savings-bank, and turned

her little drawing-room into an antique shop. I fancy Heppie wanted to

go simply to spy out the nakedness of the land and satisfy curiosity in

Grandma. But I've never forgotten that day, and how brave and bright

Mrs. James was, selling off the pretty old things which she had loved:

heirlooms of her family and her husband's; old clocks, old vases, old

ornaments, and jewels, old china and glass, old samplers and bits of

embroidery or brocade, old furniture, old pictures and transparencies,

and everything of value except old books, which she adored because his

library had been her husband's life. It was clever of her, I think, to

group the treasures together in the little drawing-room with its oak

panelling and beams, its uneven, polished oak floor, and the two

diamond-paned windows which she enlarged and threw into one. It is not

like a shop, but just a charming room crowded full of lovely things, and

every one of them for sale, even the chairs. She wrote cards of

advertisement which the hotel people let her pin up in their halls or

offices, because they respected her pluck, and had liked Doctor James.

Americans and other travellers saw the advertisements, and went to her

house; so by and by Mrs. James made a success with her experiment. When

most of her own antiquites were sold, she could afford to buy others,

just as good or better, to take their places. She never made big sums of

money; but maybe that was because she had debts of her husband's to pay

off, which she kept secret. Besides, she is so generous and kind that

she would give good prices for things in buying, and ask small ones in

selling.

"Mrs. James: Antiquities;" it says in gilt letters over the door on

which you can still see the mark left by the professional name-plate of

Doctor James. His wife had that taken off before she opened her shop,

because she felt that her going into trade might seem to discredit "his

honoured name."

That is her great watchword: "his honoured name." I've often heard her

repeat it to Grandma, who invariably snorts and says something to

dishearten or humiliate the poor humble darling who thinks so much of

the Hillard and James families, and so little of herself.

Opening the door, which rings a bell of its own accord, you walk

straight into the drawing-room, or hall. There's an oak screen which

cuts off your view to the left, and gives an opportunity for surprises;

and straight ahead at the back is a lovely old carved stairway, that

goes up steeply, with two turns and two platforms, where stand tall,

ancient clocks. Behind this hall or drawing-room, turned into a shop, is

a tiny parlour, where Mrs. James spends her few free hours, eats her

tiny, lonesome meals, and faithfully reads nearly every book in her

husband's library, so that she may be an intelligent companion for him

if he comes back. The walls of the parlour are covered with his books,

on shelves reaching up nearly as high as the low-beamed ceiling. Behind

the parlour is the kitchen, which looks into a tiny garden with one

lovely apple tree in it; and a back stairway almost like a ladder leads

to what used to be servants' rooms. Now Mrs. James sleeps in one; and

next door is the young girl, rescued from something or other by the

Salvation Army, who is her only servant. The front part of the

"upstairs," which you reach by the lovely staircase in the shop, is

occupied by a curate-lodger. Heppie says Mrs. James can afford to give

up having a lodger now, and that she keeps him on only because she's

stingy; or else because she thinks it "distinguished" to have some

connection with "Church." But I'm sure it's really because she's so kind

and good-natured, that she can't bear to turn the curate away from rooms

which have been his only home for years.

She _was_ surprised to see me get out of an automobile with a man! I

know she did see me get out, because she opened the door herself,

exclaiming in her soft Devonshire voice, which has never been hardened

by the north, "Why, Barribel, my _dear_ child, can I _believe_ my eyes?"

She throws emphasis on a great many words when she talks, which Heppie

says is gushing, and not reserved enough for a true lady; but I like it

when Mrs. James does it, because it sounds cordial, and more interested

in you than any other person's way of talking which I ever heard.

I introduced Mr. Somerled, and hurried in the next breath to explain

that he was a MacDonald, because that made him seem like a relation, and

she wouldn't think to begin with that I was with a perfect stranger. But

as soon as I said "Somerled," she knew all about him, not only the

history of the first Somerled, which, of course, she _would_ know, but

that this one was a great celebrity. _I_ shouldn't have known that, if

Mr. Norman hadn't mentioned it: and Moore with the teeth told me, too,

that she'd heard Mrs. West say he was "a millionaire." I'm not sure if

Mrs. James knew about the millions, and even if she did, they wouldn't

seem half as important to her as his pictures, which she began to chat

about. Of course they're not as important, because anybody can have

millions by accident, but they can have genius only from what they are

in themselves. I felt more than ever how wonderful it was that he should

be so good to me; a person so flattered and run after; but all the same

I _couldn't_ make myself feel in awe of him. He seemed to me just a Man:

and I wanted as much as ever to see what he would do if I took my own

way and went against him.

Mrs. James invited us into the house in her cordial, emphatic way, while

our coming and our being together were still mysteries which must have

puzzled her wildly. I saw by the blue flash in Mr. Somerled's eyes that

the artist in him admired the shop-drawing-room, and I thought from his

manner that he had taken a fancy to Mrs. James herself. I am so used to

her looks, from seeing her once a month ever since I can remember, that

I can hardly judge what she is like: and I suppose she _is_ peculiar.

But why shouldn't she try to keep young for the sake of her dream? I

think it's romantic and beautiful, and all one with her efforts to

become the intellectual equal of her lost husband. Grandma and Heppie

sneer after Mrs. James has been and gone, at the long words she uses,

and condemn her for wanting to deceive people into thinking she's much

younger than she is. But that is because they've no romance in them, and

can't understand her true motive.

Her figure is like a young girl's, though perhaps a little stiffer and

less rounded. She is short, and has the tiniest waist in the world, so

tiny that it must hurt her to breathe, but that is her chief pride,

because "the doctor" (as she always calls him) fell in love at first

sight with her slender waist; and she has never let it measure an inch

more than it did then. A big man could span it with his hands. Perhaps

Doctor James could. She dresses her hair now as he liked best seventeen

years ago, though the fringe looks old-fashioned and odd. Grandma says

her hair is bleached, otherwise it couldn't have kept its yellow colour

at her age, forty-five. But it shines and is a lovely golden. She takes

the greatest pains in doing it, too, even when she's in a hurry on a

cold winter's morning, because she's never sure "the doctor" mayn't

appear that day, to give her a surprise. It would be too bad if, after

all these years, he should walk in and find her not looking her best!

She has features like a doll's, with large dark blue eyes, and high

arched eyebrows which give her an innocent, expectant expression. Heppie

says she blacks them; but Heppie has no eyebrows at all, so it's

difficult for her to believe in other people's.

When Mrs. James came to meet us at the door, she had a ladies' paper in

her hand, open at a page where it told you in big letters, "How to be

Beautiful Forever," so I suppose it's true, as Heppie says, that she's

always looking for recipes to keep young. She had on a lavender muslin

dress, very becoming to her fair complexion, which would be perfect if

she hadn't a very few little veins showing in the pink of her cheeks,

and some faint, smiling-lines round her eyes, which you see only if you

stare rudely as Grandma does, to "take down Mrs. James's vanity."

Lavender was the doctor's favourite colour, and she invariably wears one

shade or another of it. She never would go into mourning for him, as

people thought she ought to do when he disappeared.

I explained everything, talking so fast that I got out of breath, while

Mr. Somerled walked round the room looking at the curiosities. I was

glad no customers came in to interrupt; but luckily there wasn't much

danger at that hour, as it wasn't yet half-past two, and people had

scarcely finished their luncheons. As I talked, she gave little

exclamations almost like the cooing of a dove; and the most desperate

thing in our story seemed to be, in her opinion, the fact that we hadn't

lunched.

She insisted on giving us eggs and apple-tart and coffee in her own

dining-room, and she let us come into the kitchen and help cook. Mr.

Somerled looked quite young and boyish. We all three laughed a good

deal. Not a word did Mr. Somerled say about my going to Edinburgh or the

chaperon business until we'd finished our picnic meal, and he had

selected several of the best and most expensive things in the shop for

himself. After that, how could Mrs. James refuse him what he called "a

great favour" even if she'd wished to say no, which she didn't. On the

contrary, she was enchanted. Everything had worked together to make her

going possible. The curate had gone off for a holiday, giving her

permission to use his two rooms if she liked. I could have them till we

started; and she would ask a friend from next door to attend to the

shop, a nice girl who often helped her, if she were ill or had to go

away on a "curiosity quest." "Just think!" she exclaimed, "I've never

been to Scotland, though it's only eight miles distant, and I've pined

to go all my life. You'll find that I've a good book-knowledge of the

country, if that's any use, for my dear husband's favourite pastime has

been the study of history. Since he--left Carlisle, I've devoted much

time to following his researches."

The long words do come so nicely from her pretty little mouth, and she

shapes them with such care, that they seem to issue forth one by one

like neatly formed birds being let out of a cage. She is making a

speciality of pronunciation, and what she sometimes speaks of as

"refined wording." She was a farmer's daughter in Devonshire.

It was arranged that the girl from next door should be called in at

once, in order that Mrs. James and I might go and buy things. I was rich

on the proceeds of the brooch; for Mr. Somerled counted out the rest of

the money on the parlour table; and Mrs. James abetted him in saying

that fifty pounds was not a penny too much to lend on such a treasure.

But it does seem wonderful! Mrs. James herself must have felt flush

after making such good sales, and her eyes lit at the thought of a motor

hat and coat--they seemed exciting purchases. But when Mr. Somerled

mentioned the fact that mother is one of the best-dressed women in the

world, the little woman looked frightened. "I shan't dare take the

responsibility of choosing an outfit for the child, then," said she

nervously. (I do wish people wouldn't call me "child," though it's nicer

from Mrs. James than Mrs. West!) "Supposing she shouldn't make the

correct impression? Won't you be persuaded to help us, sir, with your

advice about the most important articles?"

Somehow I feel that Mr. Somerled hates "sir" as much as I hate "child."

I expected him to make an excuse, that he knew nothing about such

things--or "articles," according to Mrs. James. But instead, he snapped

at the suggestion and looked as pleased as Punch. I suppose he doesn't

want me to be a fright and disgrace his car on the journey.

When Miss Hubbell had come in from the next house, smelling of some

lovely sort of jam which she and her mother had been making, off we

three went in the gray automobile, Mrs. James trying not to look

self-conscious and proud, nor to give little jumps and gasps when she

thought we were going to run over creatures.

It is many years since she has been to London. I think she was there on

her wedding trip and never since: and besides that expedition, Exeter

and Carlisle are her two largest cities: but, in order to impress the

great artist, she patronized Carlisle, saying we "mustn't hope for

London shops." I longed to catch his eye, because I'm sure he sees

everything that is funny; but it would have been horrid to laugh at the

kind darling, trying to be a woman of the world.

In the end, it was Mr. Somerled and I who chose everything, even Mrs.

James's motor coat and hat, for she was too timid to decide; and if she

had decided, it would have been to select all the wrong things. I had to

get my dresses ready-made, because of starting for Scotland next

morning, and it was funny to see how difficult Mr. Somerled was to

please. One would have thought he took a real interest in my clothes;

but of course it was owing to his artistic nature. We found a blue

serge--I wouldn't have believed, after my deadly experience, that blue

serge could be so pretty--and a coat and skirt of creamy cloth; and an

evening frock of white chiffon, I think the girl called it. Actually it

has short sleeves above my elbows, and quite a low neck, that shows

where my collar-bone used to be when I was thinner than I am now. It

seems an epoch to have a dress like that. It was Mr. Somerled who picked

it out from among others, and insisted on my having it, though, simple

as it looked, it was terribly expensive. Mrs. James thought I couldn't

afford it, as I had so many things to do with my fifty pounds, but Mr.

Somerled brushed aside her objections in that determined way he has even

in little things. He said that it would be money in his pocket, as an

artist, to paint me in this gown; and that I must sit for him in it. He

would call his picture "The Girl in the White Dress"; and as he'd show

it in London and New York and get a big price, of course he must be

allowed to pay for the dress. Mrs. James seemed doubtful about the

propriety, but he drew his black eyebrows together, and that made her

instantly quite sure he must be right. When she'd agreed to my having

the dress on those terms, she couldn't--as he said--stick at a mere hat,

so he bought me a lovely one to wear with the creamy cloth. He suggested

that I should keep it in the "tire box" while motoring--a huge round

thing on the top of the car.

"It is just like having a kind uncle, isn't it, my dear?" asked Mrs.

James. But I didn't feel that Mr. Somerled was the sort of man I could

_ever_ think of as a kind uncle, and I said so before I'd stopped to

wonder if it sounded rude. Luckily he didn't seem offended.

I am writing this in the curate's sitting-room upstairs in Mrs. James's

house. It is night, and we are to start to-morrow morning very early,

because I happened to mention that I'd never seen the inside of Carlisle

Castle, or put my nose into the Cathedral. Grandma does not approve of

cathedrals, and their being historic makes no difference. Mr. Somerled

said that we could visit both, and then "slip over the border." Oh, that

border! How I have thought of it, as if it were the door of Romance; and

so it is, because it is the door of Scotland. I am afraid it must be a

dream that I shall cross at last, to see the glories on the other side,

and find the lovely lady who to me is Queen of all Romance--my mother.

Still, I've pinched myself several times, and instead of waking up in my

old room at Hillard House each time I've found myself with my eyes

staring wide open, in the curate's room, which has a lot of books in it

and a smell of tobacco smoke, and on the mantelpiece Mrs. James's

wedding wreath as an ornament under a glass case.

Mr. Somerled has gone to a hotel; but he stayed to supper with us, and

Mrs. James brought out all her nicest things. It was much pleasanter

than supper last night at Moorhill Farm, though Mrs. West had lovely

things to eat. I am glad I shall never see Moore again! But I should

like to see Mr. Norman. I could feel toward him as if he were a brother.

But I don't know what to say about my feeling toward Mr. Somerled. I

think of him as of a knight, come to the rescue of a forlorn damsel in

an enchanted forest. After delivering the damsel from one

dragon--Grandma--he is going to take her away with another quite

different sort of a dragon; a well-trained, winged dragon, which people

who don't know any better believe to be only a motor-car.

II

I don't know how I dared with such a man, but I talked foolish fairy

talk to Mr. Somerled, _alias_ the Knight, this morning, and he answered

gravely in the same language. I should be doing him a great service, he

said, if I could lead him back to fairyland, because he used to know the

way, but had lost it long ago. He had given up the hope of finding it

again, and until the other day had feared that all the fairies were

dead.

"If you find fairyland, it ought to be while the heather moon shines," I

told him. "But I shan't have much time to help you look for it, because

in five days you'll be leaving me with mother, and travelling on alone.

You must search for the key to the rainbow wherever you go; because, you

know, it might be _anywhere_, and the light of the heather moon would

show it gleaming in the grass, or under a flower, or even in the middle

of the road before your eyes."

He looked at me in an odd, almost wistful way, and I couldn't look away

from him, though I wanted to, for it was as if he were reading my inmost

Me--using my eyes for windows, of which I couldn't draw the curtains.

"_You_ might find the key, if you haven't got it already," he said.

"Anyhow, I can't find it without your help, But no matter. Perhaps I

shouldn't know what to do with it if I did, now I've grown old and

disillusioned."

Then I answered, because I couldn't help it under the spell of his eyes.

"You're not old or disillusioned. You're a Knight: and knights who

rescue damsels are always young and brave."

Before I saw him, if any one had told me a person of over thirty was not

middle-aged, I should have thought it nonsense. But now I see that even

_thirty-four_ is not old. It seems exactly the right age for a man.

"If you dub me Knight, I christen you Princess," said he, laughing as if

embarrassed, yet pleased. "Because, I confess I wandered near enough to

the border last night, to think of you as a princess who'd been shut up

in a glass retort, as all really nice princesses were in my day, in

fairyland. Now the retort has been opened, though the princess believed

it to be hermetically sealed----"

"It was the knight who opened it!" I interrupted him. "But did you

_really_ go near to the border?"

"The border of fairyland."

"Oh! I meant Scotland. But, after all, to me it seems much the same

thing. Doesn't it to you?"

"I haven't thought of it so for a good many years," he said. "Yet it

might be----"

I lost the rest, because Mrs. James came in, ready to start. We had been

standing together in the little sitting-room at the back of the house

while she gave last directions to Miss Hubbell. And I had on my new

serge, of course, with a blouse more fit for an angel than Barrie

MacDonald; and a gray coat and a gray hood with a long gray veil

floating out from it--all the same gray as the car, and chosen to match.

I couldn't help thinking, when I put on the hood before the curate's

looking-glass, that in spite of a green crack across my face and one

purple splash on my eye (it's a very antique glass, not used to girls'

complexions) I really wasn't so bad. Oh, if only mother is pleased! But

of course all mothers must be pleased with their children. One reads a

great deal in books about mother's love.

We bought two small trunks yesterday, one for Mrs. James and one for me,

of the same gray colour as our cloaks, both made especially for a

motor-car: and Mr. Somerled has a gray trunk too, smaller than mine,

also a thing he calls a suit-case. This morning he brought us each a

present of a little gray handbag, fitted with brushes and combs and a

mirror, and tiny bottles for eau-de-cologne. My fittings look like gold,

though I suppose of course they are only gilded; and Mrs. James's are

silver. She thought it would hurt his feelings if we refused to accept

his presents, though she was brought up to believe that a lady must

never take anything from a gentleman except books, sweets, and flowers.

However, she says she has often found it difficult to conduct life

according to rules of etiquette, as there are so many complications

they've forgotten to put in.

It was only half-past eight when we started, for we wanted to see the

Cathedral and the Castle. We were going to the Cathedral first, and on

the way we had to pass a big motor garage which has always made my heart

beat just to see, whenever Heppie and I have come to town shopping. I

used to wonder what it would be like to sail through the wide doorway in

a car of my own. Poor me, in my "glass retort," with little chance, it

seemed, of escaping from the dragon to travel in any sort of mobile

except the pillow-mobile into which I used often, to jump at night, and

flash away to far-off countries of dreamland.

Now, poking its large nose out of that garage was a gray motor (but not

so nice a gray as ours) conducted by a wisp of a chauffeur. He was

driving two passengers, and I bounced on the springy back seat of our

car with surprise as I recognized them. Down went my head mechanically

in as polite a bow as if I hadn't been turned out of her house by Mrs.

West, though, when I realized what I was doing, I was afraid she might

pretend not to know me. It must make one feel such a worm to be ignored

when one has just grinned and ducked! But I needn't have feared. Mr.

Norman took off his cap as impressively as if I were really the princess

of the knight's fairy dream; and Mrs. West bowed, with a sweet, sad look

first at Mr. Somerled, then finishing up with me--just the reproachful,

yet resigned martyr-look a queen ought to give a crowd of rebellious

subjects on her way to the scaffold where their cruelty had sent her.

Of course, if I had to show this to Mr. Norman, and get him to criticise

my writing as he offered to do, I couldn't put in such things; so

perhaps it's as well I shall have to worry on alone.

Mr. Somerled, who was driving our car (with Vedder by his side, tooting

a musical horn), took off his cap as beautifully as Mr. Norman did,

without upsetting the steering, though there seemed to be a hundred

things and creatures of all descriptions in front of the motor's big

bright nose at that particular moment. I'd never realized until then

what a crowded, busy place Carlisle is; because it seems that you have a

different set of emotions and impressions especially for use in

motor-cars, and you _have_ to use them there, whether you like or not. I

suppose they lay quiescent in people for thousands of years, between the

epoch of exciting prehistoric beasts and automobiles; but now they come

into play often enough to make up for lost time. Not that I was afraid

in the car, even at first: only it did seem as if all the things that

moved on the face of the earth were aiming directly at us, to say

nothing of what we ourselves were doing to them. Luckily for me, I

trusted Mr. Somerled; and perhaps Mrs. James hadn't quite arrived at

that blissful state, or else she was naturally more timid, for she held

on so fast to the arm of the seat that she tore a glove, and had a

strained expression about her eyes and nostrils, though she beamed in a

painstaking way whenever she caught me looking at her.

"Who is that pretty blond lady and the handsome dark young man you just

bowed to?" she asked, when we had passed the gray car that was like a

bad copy of ours.

I told her that the man was Mr. Basil Norman and the lady was Mrs. West,

who had quarrelled with Mr. Somerled yesterday for some reason he

wouldn't explain, but probably because she couldn't be bothered with me.

"Poor thing, she looked ready to cry!" sighed Mrs. James. "By this time,

I dare say, she's sorry for what she did, and praying for a chance to

make up."

It would be Christian to pray for it too; but if making up means having

her in this car, I should have to pound the prayer into my heart like a

nail.

There was no luggage in the other car, so I guessed that they were

trying it, to see whether they might like to hire it for their trip.

And, in spite of Mr. Norman being so kind and different from his sister,

I couldn't help hoping that they might begin with another part of

Scotland from ours.

I kept on thinking of them as we wound through the traffic, though dear

Mrs. James continued to talk in an approving way, suited to my

intelligence, about Carlisle, and what a wonderful place it was, and how

proud we ought to be of it. How wide and well-built the new streets

were, and how interesting the old ones! How good for the complexion were

the winds that blew from the great moorland spaces beyond the town! I

hadn't thought much about all that myself, but certainly Carlisle is

romantic as a city, because in history you see how it has always been a

solid bulwark of the English, against which tides of invasion dashed

themselves in vain--a sort of watch-tower, whence England gazed out

across the border where danger lay in wait. I can't help turning my mind

to the romantic side of things, though it may be silly; but, after all,

it's just as real as the other side. Both are _there_, and you can

choose which you like to have for your own, as I said to Mr. Somerled.

By and by we came to the Cathedral. I had to confess that I'd never been

in, but I didn't mention Grandma's prejudice against cathedrals. I'd

never pined to see the inside as I should if the outside were tall and

graceful and gray, instead of dumpy and red--an ochre-red colour which

is interesting only when the sun shines on it, or when wet and sparkling

with rain, in the midst of its lovely old trees. I almost gasped with

joy and surprise, however, when we entered, for the interior is

wonderful. It is as if the builders had had in mind an allegory about a

plain body and a glorious soul.

Who would have thought that Mr. Somerled would remember so much history

of this northern country, after living, since he grew up, in America,

and making fame and fortune there? Mrs. James thinks that he even talks

like an American. She is a good judge, because more than half the

customers of her curiosity shop are Americans, and they chat with her

about all sorts of things. She reads her husband's history books, in

order to give him an agreeable surprise when he comes back, and the

knowledge she picks up is money in her pocket, because she can pour out

floods of information upon inquiring tourists. When she's kindly told

them all about the Romans in general and the Augustan Legion in

particular, and the Museum, and William Rufus's Castle; about the

Cathedral having been robbed of most of its nave to rebuild the city

walls in 1644, and Sir Walter Scott being married to his pretty French

bride there (or rather in St. Mary's Church, which was tacked on to it

in those days), and so on, Americans, and even canny Scots, can't sneak

out of her shop without buying something.

I loved the immense simplicity of that Norman nave, with its huge

crumpled arches crushed into curving waves by the long-ago collapse of

the foundations and the strain of centuries on the masonry. It was a

startling contrast to go from the Norman part into the choir, all a mass

of carving and decoration, with its vast east window of jewel-like

thirteenth-century glass, which Mr. Somerled pronounced finer even than

the windows of York and Gloucester cathedrals.

It seems that, although he hasn't been in Scotland since he left

seventeen years ago (vowing never to return until something or other

happened), he has been in England several times meanwhile, and travelled

all over Europe. He pretended that he wasn't at all excited about

crossing the border after these many years' exile, but when I cried out

that I couldn't believe him so commonplace and dull, he opened his eyes

wide, as surprised as if I'd boxed his ears. Mrs. James whispered that I

had been rude; and when I stopped to think, I realized how unlike Mrs.

West I had been. She is so gracious and complimentary to Mr. Somerled,

never saying anything she thinks he might dislike. But he heard Mrs.

James's whisper and said, "You must let her alone, please, my Lady

Chaperon, because I have a sort of idea she is going to dig me up by the

roots, and hang me up to air, and altogether do me a lot of good in the

end."

They both knew much more about the Cathedral than I did, but even I knew

something, because there was a book of father's which I had read. So,

when they'd explained that the beautiful pink columns and the painted

oak screens looked new because Cromwell's men whitewashed everything

when they stabled horses in the Cathedral, and the white wasn't scraped

off till comparatively lately, long after the Cathedral was a prison in

1745, I told them something they hadn't learned, or had forgotten. I was

proud to have a story about Bruce coming to Carlisle to take his oath of

allegiance, before the great repentance, and hating the Cathedral ever

afterward.

Even the Castle doesn't look as splendid from outside as it really is.

It's like an enormous box, a good deal battered and patched, containing

a kingdom's treasures. But of course I didn't know about the treasures

until I had been in.

I had set my heart on seeing the place, because, as I said to Mr.

Somerled, I may never come back to Carlisle once I begin to live with

mother and go about with her. It was a blow to be told at the entrance

gate where the public enters (and where there ought to be a moat, but

isn't) that the Castle was closed for repairs. Even a grown-up man like

Mr. Somerled, who has seen everything, looked disappointed; but I

suppose he couldn't fight his way in against the power of England; and

we should have turned ignominiously away if it hadn't been for Mrs.

James. "You are surely not aware," said she in the aristocratic,

long-worded way she has when she thinks of living up to the doctor (and

when she isn't in earshot of Grandma) "of the distinguished identity of

this gentleman. This"--with a wave of her tiny hand--"is the great

portrait painter, Somerled. I will not introduce him as 'Mr.,' for he is

as far above that designation as Shakespeare."

The poor wretch who had refused us was flabbergasted. "Excuse me a

minute, mum!" he muttered, and darted off to return with a young officer

before "the Great Somerled" had time to remonstrate. But, instead of

devoting undivided attention to the celebrity who must be appeased, the

officer looked at me, and we recognized each other. His face changed,

and I know mine did, because my cheeks felt as if some one had pinched

them. No wonder, because this had been my ideal for almost a year,

before I saw the photographs in shop windows of Robert Loraine, and I

had dreamed several times that I was engaged to him, with a gorgeous

diamond ring, and afterward that I was his widow in one of those sweet

Marie Stuart caps. It almost seemed as if he might see the cap in my

eyes, so I hurried to look down, and appear as calm as if I had never

met him in the street when out walking with Heppie. Once I dropped my

handkerchief, like ladies in books (only I did it on purpose, which they

never do if heroines, not villainesses), and he ran after us and picked

it up. That was, of course, the only time he ever spoke; but, though I

have cared not only for Robert Loraine but Henry Ainley since, I should

have known his voice anywhere. It was disappointing not to thrill; but

to be honest, I must admit that the voice sounded meaningless now,

compared with that of the Knight. Nevertheless, he was saying kind

things, offering to be our guide over the Castle and show us curiosities

that the "ordinary public" is not allowed to see.

Just as Mr. Somerled was thanking the officer (I soon found out that he

was a lieutenant, named Donald Douglas) I heard other voices behind me.

"Good gracious!" I had just time to think, "it's Mrs. West and Mr.

Norman," when they came round a screen of masonry, and were upon us. As

soon as they saw who we were they stopped, Mrs. West pale, with the same

martyred expression, which grew sweeter and sadder every instant. Mr.

Norman shook hands with us in a cordial but embarrassed way, and the man

who had refused to let us enter at first would have headed the newcomers

off, but Mr. Douglas stopped him.

"The Castle isn't open for visitors to-day," he said, "but I am making

an exception of Mr. Somerled's party, and as you are friends of his I

shall be delighted to include you."

"You're very kind indeed; but----" Mr. Norman had to begin answering

because his sister didn't speak, and only looked, looked, looked at "her

friend Mr. Somerled." Her brother awaited a cue until the pause grew

embarrassing, and then the Knight sprang to the rescue of another lady

in distress.

"We shall be delighted too, Mrs. West," he said.

That was probably what she wanted, for she beamed on the Soldier Man

(_my_ Soldier Man), and accepted his kindness. Mr. Douglas then put

himself by my side; and Mrs. West annexed Mr. Somerled, or he annexed

her. This left Mrs. James for Mr. Norman, and they hadn't been

introduced: but they began chatting at once.

Mr. Douglas seemed quite interested when I told him he was the first

soldier I'd ever known outside a book. He asked me if I thought I should

like soldiers, and I said yes.

Into the heart of the fortress he led us: into the keep, square,

ponderous, forbidding, cool even on a hot August day, and the best part

left now of the proud old fortress.

Mrs. West had a notebook, a little purple and gold one, like a

doubled-over pansy. As Mr. Douglas (laughing at himself because he was

not experienced as a guide) rattled off all the information he could

remember about Roman foundations--a sack by the Danes; William the

Conqueror, and William Rufus, and a British fort older than the time of

the Romans--she would scribble bits down hastily. But Mr. Norman took no

notes, and when he saw her writing, he looked sad, almost guilty.

"Did you say the round wall the Britons built is under the keep?" she

asked Mr. Douglas, who is, I feel, the kind of young man you would be

calling "Donald" before you knew what you were doing. "Are there only

three fortresses like this in all England? Do tell me what makes this

unique?" And she looked at him so prettily that if I'd been in his place

I'd have run to her like a dog and fawned at her feet. But he never

stirred, and simply answered across the other people, though she is so

much more intelligent than I--I, who couldn't describe properly what is

a bastion.

Our guide lit a candle for the dark dungeons, awful places with grooves

worn in the stone floors by the dragging feet of the prisoners, who

paced rhythmically up and down in the tether of their chains. On the

walls, covered with a cold sweat, as of deathless agony, we could see

the staples; and there was one spot of a dreadful fascination, where

Donald Douglas held his candle to show a trail of slimy moisture. Always

this weeping stone had been there, he said, no one knew why; and in old

days, when these dungeons bore the name of the "black hell," prisoners

tortured with thirst used, animal-like, to lick the oozing patch, making

many hollows round it like miniature glacier mills. After Culloden one

hundred and eighty men were thrown in during one night, and only fifty

were alive in the morning.

It made me feel very loyal to Scotland hearing stories like this--though

I was proud of the Castle too. And I loved the tale of Willie Armstrong,

Kinmont Willie, treacherously given up to Lord Scrope, for the worst

dungeon of all, by troopers who in taking him violated a border truce.

His escape was a real romance; and I am glad Lord Buccleugh, who saved

him, was an ancestor of Sir Walter Scott.

It was no use appealing to Lord Scrope, the Warden of the West Marches,

for justice, so Lord Buccleugh resolved to make a dash, and rescue the

raider, whom he loved. He got forty men (the English said two hundred,

but I know better), attacked the Castle, took it by assault, and carried

Willie, with fetters still dangling from his wrists, clear away across

the Eden and the roaring Esk, where none dared follow. When Queen

Elizabeth asked him afterward how he had dared, he said, "What is there

a brave man will not dare to do?"

It was not in the first dungeons that we heard the story of Willie

Armstrong, but later, in the part of the Castle which the public is not

allowed to see. We got there by climbing steep stairs into what are now

the soldiers' storerooms: and it's because they are storerooms that

they're kept so private. Once these rooms too were prisons; and behind

an immense door of oak, almost in darkness, are perfectly wonderful

wall-carvings cut into the reddish sandstone by prisoners: figures of

men and devils; scenes of history; initials woven into ingenious

monograms, Prince Charlie's among them, and hearts interlaced. I wish I

had lived in those days, and I wondered aloud if there were any girls

named Barribel then. Donald Douglas said yes; it was a very ancient and

well-loved Scottish name.

Stupid people in 1835 tore down most of the tower where Queen Mary was

imprisoned; but they were stopped before it was all gone, so luckily

there is a corner left, with a few graceful carvings on the outer wall.

And only three years ago a wonderful old table was found hidden away in

a dungeon which, it is thought, must have been used as her dining-table,

before she was whisked away from Carlisle to Bolton Castle in 1568. We

saw the table--very dark, very rough, looking like a prehistoric animal

turned to wood; and Donald Douglas said it was perhaps the oldest table

alive in England to-day--as old as King Edward's, and of the shape which

gave an idea later for Tudor tables. As he talked, I could almost see

Queen Mary sitting by this queer piece of furniture eating a poor meal,

and reading some book which might help her forget--perhaps idly

fingering the splendid black pearls which Mrs. James said were bought

last year in a tiny shop in Scotland, kept by descendants of a faithful

maid who went with her to the scaffold. And the shopkeeper, who thought

they were wax beads, lying in an old forgotten box, sold them for ten

shillings!

They found in another dungeon of the Castle, hidden in a crack of the

wall, a silver snuff-box with a withered finger in it, which must have

been a prisoner's "fetich." But it couldn't have brought him luck;

otherwise, if he'd been released, he would have taken it away with him.

Probably he swung on the hanging beam that sticks out over the window of

the old "condemned cell."

Next to Queen Mary's table, and perhaps the roof of the keep whence we

could see away over the border into mystery-land, I liked best of all

the Castle things a little deserted house in a courtyard, where Richard

III lived for a while, when he was young. Few people know about it, or

are taken to see it. But it alone would be enough to make the Castle

interesting if there were nothing else. Only a few empty, echoing,

half-ruinous rooms there are, with a queer chimney or two to give

comfort; but Richard's enemies made it a charge against him that he

lived in Carlisle Castle, splendidly housed in sinful luxury. What a

pity all the tales against him were not so little true as that!

III

We're in Scotland!

Cæsar could not have revelled in crossing the Rubicon as I revelled in

crossing the border. The very word rings out like the sudden sound of

bells, or the mysterious music that thrills one's blood in dreams.

Poor Cæsar was obliged to burn his nice boats, and think disagreeable

thoughts about the great responsibility he had taken, whereas we made

our crossing in a beautiful motor-car, and I had no responsibility

whatever. As for disagreeable thoughts, I had a few in England, but the

air of Scotland has chased them away. I see that they were silly as well

as selfish thoughts. I was so wicked that I hoped Mr. Somerled would not

make up his quarrel with Mrs. West. I was afraid that if he did the poor

princess he had rescued would be in his way, and that he would wish her

safely back in her glass retort. Now they _have_ made up, yet somehow I

don't feel in the way. He is so kind, and--yes, I must admit it--Mrs.

West is so tactful.

It seems that while Mr. Douglas and I were walking and talking together

in Carlisle Castle she apologized to Mr. Somerled. And outside the

entrance gates, when Mr. Douglas had shaken hands, hoping to "run across

us" when he gets leave for Edinburgh, Mrs. West walked up to me. "I've

begged Mr. Somerled's pardon," she said, with her pretty smile which

never changes, "and he has forgiven me, so you mustn't go on thinking me

an ill-natured, bad-tempered person, please; I'm not really. Only we

writing people have 'temperaments,' just as artists have--Mr. Somerled

himself, for instance. My brother scolded me, and I deserved it. He is

_so_ interested in you and your talent for writing, and wants to be your

friend. You won't blame him for my fault, will you?"

Of course I said no, and she held out her hand. When I'd put mine into

it, she pressed it gently, and before letting it go asked in a lower

voice if Mr. Somerled had told me why they quarrelled.

I shook my head emphatically as I answered that he hadn't said a word,

and she looked suddenly much happier. "That is _like_ him!" she

exclaimed--if one can exclaim in a whisper. "Well, we must forget what's

passed, and think of the future. Basil and I have hired a car now, and

will travel in it; but that will be all the better for our novel, as

I've just been telling Mr. Somerled, for we shan't have anything to

distract our minds from the scenery and our notebooks. I've begged him

to feel _no_ regrets: for now we're friends again, and we shall meet

constantly, no doubt, without any embarrassment, but a great deal of

pleasure. As for you, dear little girl, you mustn't feel that the cloud

we've passed through need shadow you. It had to do only with us

grown-ups. You have but to 'play dolls' and be happy, until you're

safely tied up in your mother's apron-strings. Not that she's likely to

have any!" And Mrs. West laughed, showing her white teeth that are

almost like a child's.

"Thank you," I said. "I mean to be happy--_very_ happy!"

She looked over her shoulder at Mr. Norman, as if giving him a signal,

and he came and talked to me. He said that he had hardly slept all

night, because he was so miserable over what had happened, for every

one's sake, but especially for his own, as he felt that a beautiful hope

had been snatched away from him. "It was the hope of a friendship with

you," he added. "But now we'll take it up just where it fell down, won't

we, finding that it isn't broken after all?"

While we were shaking hands I heard Mrs. West tell Mr. Douglas that I

was the daughter of Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald, and he seemed immensely

astonished, just as Mr. Somerled had, and Mrs. West and Mr. Norman.

I wonder why every one is so surprised? Can it be that actresses do not

often have children?

We bade each other good-bye, all of us, for Mrs. West and Mr. Norman are

going to see some places that apparently Mr. Somerled doesn't care

about; and it isn't quite certain when we shall meet again. "We shall be

like bad pennies, always turning up," Mr. Norman said; and Mrs. West

added quickly to Mr. Somerled, "But if we do, you mustn't feel that

we're tracking you down. The exigencies of authorship force us to be

conscientious sight-seers."

As she spoke, she gave her brother a look. I don't know what it meant,

but his face had a sad, tired expression, as if there had been some

dispute or argument between him and his sister, and he was sick of it. I

don't feel, somehow, that he's in a good mood for their story-writing

together just now, and I'm sorry for him. I believe he would rather be

motoring with us than with her. Perhaps they have had a difference of

opinion about the plot of their book, for he told me in the summer-house

that he'd suddenly got a new idea for a motor romance, and had lost

interest in the old one.

When we were ready to start away from Carlisle Castle, Mr. Somerled

condemned Vedder to sit at his feet; but the man seemed to take this

quite for granted, and not to mind in the least. "Would one of you care

to sit beside me?" he asked with so wooden an expression that it was

impossible to guess whether he would prefer Mrs. James or me to say yes.

Selfishly, I wanted him to prefer me, and because he didn't seem to

mind, I pretended not to hear, but went on talking to Mr. Douglas as if

he were the most important person in the world. Suddenly I felt a kind

of power over him, as if I were a grown-up woman in a book, and could

make men take an interest in me. Still, I could quite well hear Mrs.

James answer that she was too great a coward for the front seat, but she

was sure I would love it. Mr. Somerled turned to me then, without

speaking, as if to wait for me to answer, and I couldn't help thinking,

by the look in his eyes, that he _had_ wanted me, in spite of the wooden

expression. So I stopped in the midst of a word to Mr. Douglas, and

said, as meekly as a trained dove, that I should like to sit in front.

"What a pity you haven't got a congenial, romantic companion in the car,

like that lad," said the Knight, rather sharply, "instead of a war-worn

veteran of over thirty."

"Oh, I'd rather have you, because I feel already as if I'd known you

always," I explained. "And do you know, it didn't seem to me there was

anything romantic about Mr. Douglas, except his name."

"In that case, you are a little flirt," said he, driving fast. But when

I looked at him in the greatest surprise, he seemed sorry. "I take that

back," he said. "I really don't believe you know yet what the word

means, or what you've done to earn it. Are you contented with me as a

companion, or would you rather have Douglas, or Norman? I should really

like to know, out of sheer curiosity, so you needn't mind telling the

truth, for in any case you won't hurt my feelings."

"Why, but you are my Knight!" I said. And he asked no more questions

then about personal matters. We talked of the scenery, or he let me

talk, and said that it didn't disturb him in driving. He seemed quite to

take an interest in what I had to say, as if I had been an intelligent

person like Mrs. West. He didn't laugh at the high-flown ideas I've

collected about history, and frontiers between countries, but said that

my enthusiasms were contagious.

"I'd given up all hope of a thrill at crossing the border," he said. "I

thought it was too late. 'What's long sought often comes when unsought,'

you know--or rather, you don't know yet, and I hope you never will. You

are making me wonder if, after all, instead of putting off my homecoming

too long, I haven't chosen just the right moment."

I was glad to hear this, though I don't know even now how I managed to

give him that idea, unless by boiling with inward joy, and always

insisting that the world's not old, but young--a wonderful place, where

every flower and bird and every ray of sunlight is worth being born to

see.

I asked him not to tell me when we came to the border, because I hoped

to know it by instinct; and, as it turned out, I _did_ know. But I think

any one with eyes must have known.

Out from old Caer Luel, our road had crossed the Eden where Willie

Armstrong escaped, and ran on white and smooth toward the Solway, whose

sands glistened golden in the sun. The tide, which I'd read of as racing

like a horse at gallop, was busy somewhere else, and the river lay

untroubled, a broad, blue ribbon in the sandy plain where Prince

Charlie's men and horses once struggled and drowned.

Now I knew we must be in the Debatable Lands, the hunting-ground of the

border raiders, beautiful wild land, full of the sound of rivers, voices

of the Teviot and the Eden, the Ettrick and the Yarrow, singing together

and mingling with the voices of poets who loved them. Through the

country of dead Knights of the Road my live Knight of To-day drove

slowly, thinking maybe of dim centuries before history began, when the

Picts and Gaels I have read of fought together among the billowy

mountains; or of the Romans building Hadrian's wall against the "little

dark men"; or of the many heroes, Scottish and English, who had drenched

the heather with their blood since then; or perhaps of himself, and the

days of his boyhood when he said good-bye to bonny Scotland and went to

try his fortune in the New World. Whatever his thoughts may have been,

they made his face at first sad, then hard; I fancied that it was of

himself as a boy he thought, and of his father and mother, whom he will

not see when he goes home; so to bring him out of his brown study I

began to tell him a story Mrs. Muir had told me about the border. It was

the tale of the last Picts, and the secret of the heather ale. All, all

the mysterious little dark people had been swept away in a great

massacre by the Scots after centuries of fighting with the Romans; and

only a father and son were left alive. "Give me thy Pictish secret of

brewing heather ale," said the King of the Scots, when the pair were

brought before him, "and I may perhaps spare thee and thy son."

Then the dark Pict shut his eyes for a moment, and thought what to do.

He thought that the King would kill him and his son when he had their

secret; and he thought of the mead which had the power of wafting the

Picts to the Land of Pleasant Dreams.

From the bonny bells of heather,

They brewed a drink langsyne,

Was sweeter far than honey,

Was stronger far than wine.

They brewed it and they drank it,

And lay in blessed swound

For days and days together,

In their dwellings underground.

When he had thought with his eyes shut, the Pict said that he could not

tell the secret while his son lived, because of the shame he would feel

that his own flesh and blood should know him a traitor. He said this

because he believed they would kill the boy quickly without torture; and

the old man was right, for they bound his son hand and foot, and flung

him out to sea. "Now tell us the secret," they said. But the Pict only

laughed and answered, "Now I will not tell, because there is nothing

more you can do to hurt me." So they killed him quickly too, in their

rage, and the secret of the heather ale died with him.

Though he liked the story, the obstinate man argued that the last of the

Picts were not really killed in this or any other way; that they had

slowly died out as a race, and had married with the Scots, leaving a

strain of their blood in the land to this day. "You know," he said,

"that Somerled of the Isles married a Pictish princess, and so there's

Pictish blood in the veins of the MacDonalds, in your veins and in mine,

though I'm of cottage birth, and you are of the castle."

"I know that story of Somerled," I answered, "and how, hero though he

was, he got his princess by a fraud. It makes Kim seem more human."

"I wonder if his princess thought so?" said Somerled the Second.

"Why, of course she did," I answered him as if I were in her confidence.

When I was in Carlisle, and proud of my English birth, I used to like

reading about the great battle of the Solway Moss, where two hundred

English horsemen killed or took prisoners more than a thousand Scots

they'd chased into the bog; but now I've forgotten everything except

that I'm a Scottish lass; and though I'm of the Highlands, and these

were Lowland men, I don't, as I did, love to dwell upon the raid of the

Solway Moss. Still, I could not get it out of my head, and while I

pictured it, as I have to do most things, whether I wish or no, I saw a

bridge--a fine stone bridge, flung like the span of a petrified rainbow

across a small stream.

"That must be the Sark!" I gasped. "And we've come--we've come to the

border!"

"Good lass, to divine it!" said he. And how I liked his calling me a

good lass--it was better than princess!

We crossed the bridge slowly, lingering with half the car in England,

half in Scotland; then suddenly we sprang on gayly, with a rush ahead,

past the famous toll-house, which looked exactly like all its pictures.

"Ho for Scotland--our ain countree!" I cried; and though he did not turn

to me, I saw his profile looking flushed and glad.

"Now you should take back your own name of MacDonald again, from this

very minute of crossing the border," I said, when I had drawn in my

first long breath of Scotland. "Somerled's a grand name, yet it was only

the foundation of MacDonald. But I forgot! You've made your fame and

money as Somerled. Which do you love more--your Scottish blood or your

American fame and fortune?"

"Blood is stronger than water, and fame is running water," he said. "As

for the money, I've cared too much for it--at least for the power it

gave me. I didn't make the most of it with my pictures, and greed led me

to love it better than my true work. That's why I lost the way to

fairyland, little Princess. I buried myself under the 'shields and

bracelets,' and I buried my talents, such as they were. For a while

Somerled tried to deserve the great name he had chosen--but only for a

little while. When by accident he grew rich, he began to wallow. Not a

picture worthy of his boyish ambition has he painted for five years.

What he has done have been 'potboilers.' He forgot that he was an

artist, and wanted only to be a millionaire. Disgusting! Now that I've

told you this, do you--a MacDonald--bid me to take the name again at the

border, where, as a boy, I laid it down--long ago, with high hopes and

vows romantic enough to please even you?"

"Yes," I said, "I, a MacDonald, bid you to take up the name, and with it

all the old hopes and the old ambitions, as you come back into your own

land. Forget your silly money, and remember only that you're an artist

in a lovely motor-car. Won't _that_ make you happy--and a boy again?"

"Something is making me happy--and a boy again," he echoed.

IV

Any dull body who says that the minute you're over the border everything

is not changed, can have no eyes--nor nose, because even the smell is

different. It is--I'm sure it is--the adorable smell of peat. I have

never yet smelt peat, but this is like my dreams.

Oh, how beautiful everything was as we crossed the span of the stone

rainbow! A fresh wind had sprung up and out of the brilliant sunshine a

shower was spurting, like diamonds set in gold. I saw the dazzling sight

with eyes full of rain and curls.

"Here we'll find the rainbow key--on _this_ side the bridge, in the

keeping of the Border Saints or Wizards," said I; for the hills and

lowlands that rolled away to the making of Scotland had a colour as if

stained with the fadeless, dried rainbows of centuries. Mingled with

peat was the tea-rose scent of summer rain and of running water, which

is as the fragrance of fresh-cut melons. Clouds like huge white brooms

swept the sky, and surging suddenly round us was a wave of sheep,

charming, reserved, Scottish sheep with ears of a different shape from

the English kind, like those of exaggerated rabbits. They looked at us

with horizontal eyes of pale brass cut across with narrow slits of jet,

and their thick wool, wet with rain, sparkled as if encrusted with

diamond dust. With them was a collie, much collie-er than English

collies, with a pawky Scottish smile. Not that I know what pawky means,

but it seems a word I ought to use at once, now we are on Scottish soil.

Nobody need tell me that the first houses of Scotland have any

resemblance to the last houses of England. Maybe the country hasn't had

time to change much, just in crossing the bridge. I won't argue about

that. But the houses are as different from English houses as Scotsmen

are from Englishmen. Could you ever mistake a Scot for an un-Scot? No!

Our wide-apart eyes and our dreamy yet practical expression, our high

cheekbones, our sensitive, clear-cut nostrils, and the something

mysterious in our gaze which no one can explain or understand, not even

ourselves, is all our own. I have just found this out since crossing the

border. And am I not a MacDonald of Dhrum?

I can't say that the first Scots I met--men, women, or children--looked

like descendants of the robber hordes who used to make the Borderland

their home; yet I paid them the compliment to believe they were such.

And you never would dream that the great-great-grandchildren of raiders

could have built for themselves the mild, solid, self-respecting houses

these people have dotted along the road where King Arthur passed, and

where some of the most romantic battles of history have been fought. But

so it is. And there the houses are. The people have found a kind of

stone to build them with, which looks like pressed roses; and there are

door-stones and even gate-stones of such an incredible cleanness, that

some women must devote their whole lives to their service, as nuns do to

prayer.

Soon we came to the village and the post-office of Gretna Green,

bristling with picture post cards. There was the expected group of

whitewashed, one-story houses plastered with exciting notices: "Old

Priests' Relics," "Marriage Registers Kept," and delightful things like

that. So far, the scene was just what I'd imagined; but there was one

feature in the picture which made me feel I must be dreaming, it was so

surprising and extraordinary.

In front of the Blacksmith's Shop stood the quaintest vehicle out of a

museum. It was an antique chaise such as no one in the last five

generations can have seen except in an illustrated book, or an old

coloured print. Two handsome gray horses were harnessed to it, looking

quite embarrassed, as if they hated being made conspicuous, and hoped

that they might not be recognized by their smart acquaintances. As we

came gliding past, they turned away their faces, lest our

motor--christened by me Gray Dragon--should regard them with contempt.

By the horses' heads stood a gorgeous, grinning man, dressed in livery

such as postilions may have worn a hundred years ago. Talking to him was

a blacksmith of the same remote epoch, with knee-breeches showing under

a leather apron, a great hammer in his hand, and on his head a high,

broad-brimmed beaver hat balanced on a white wig. Not far off were two

men in modern clothes; and they were placing in position some kind of a

photographic camera.

When they saw that we meant to stop at the Blacksmith's Shop, they

brightened up, and seemed as much interested as if they had never before

seen an automobile.

"They're going to take photographs of a Gretna Green wedding of ancient

times, for a biograph show, evidently," said Sir Somerled MacDonald, and

quickly explained to the late prisoner of the glass retort the nature of

a biograph. "Rather a good idea that! Apparently they're waiting for

their chief characters, the bride and groom."

He was helping Mrs. James to get down from the car, and I had already

jumped out, for, of course, we wanted to visit the old house, and see

everything there was to see, in the place where Shelley (maybe!) and

hundreds of other famous people have been married. But before going in,

we lingered to stare at the chaise, which was rather like an immense

bathtub, the kind we used at Hillard House, where Grandma would have no

such new-fangled innovation as a bathroom. As we stood there, one of the

men with the camera came up, hovered undecidedly, and then said, with a

cough to draw attention to himself: "Excuse me, sir, but will you pardon

the liberty of my asking if you and the young lady will oblige us with a

great favour?"

Sir Somerled frowned slightly, with his millionaire manner, which is not

so nice as the other. "What is the favour?" he inquired.

"Why, sir," the man explained, "we're in a bit of a hole. You can see

we're here to reconstruct a runaway wedding for a cinema show. We

represent the North British Biograph Company, and we've been to a lot of

trouble and expense to get our props together. Pretty soon the father's

coach will be along, and we've got all we want except the two principal

figures. The bride and groom we engaged have failed to turn up. We can't

make out what's happened, but they ain't here, and we've searched the

neighbourhood without finding anything we can do with in their place.

The light's just right now, after the flurry o' rain, but by the look o'

the sky it won't last; and altogether it seems as if we'd have our

trouble for our pains unless you and the young lady'd consent to help us

out. If you'll allow me to say so, sir, in costume you'd be the Ideal

Thing."

For an instant Sir S. looked as haughty as a dethroned king. Then the

funny side struck him, and he laughed. "You flatter us," he said; "but

I'm sorry we can't do what you ask. Perhaps your people will turn up,

after all."

The poor man looked bitterly disappointed, almost as if he would cry,

and so did the other, who had been listening with enormously large red

ears like handles on a terra-cotta urn. Both men were wet with the rain,

which had fallen sharply and only just stopped as if to welcome us over

the border. The one who had spoken turned sadly away, without venturing

to urge his point (Sir S. isn't the sort of person strange men would

take liberties with), but in retreating he threw one agonized look at

me. I couldn't resist it.

"Oh, _do_ let's stand for the bride and groom!" I pleaded. And

foreseeing a battle the photographer hastily retired into the background

to let us fight it out. "It would be such fun. I should love it. You

know, I've always vowed to be married at Gretna Green, if at all. And

this would be next best to the real thing."

I gazed up at Sir S. as enticingly as I knew how, and there was a look

in his eyes that frightened me a little. I was afraid I had made him

angry; yet it wasn't a look of crossness. I could not tell what it

meant, but his voice in answering sounded kind. As usual, when he has

been particularly grave, he smiled that nice smile which begins in his

eyes and suddenly lights up his face.

"You'd better wait for the 'real thing' and the real man," said he. "Be

patient for a few years. You've plenty of time."

"I may _never_ get another such good chance," I mourned. "You _are_

unkind! It would amuse me so much, and it wouldn't hurt you."

"Do you think that's why I say no?" he asked. "You think I'm afraid?"

"Yes, I do," I insisted. "You're too proud to do what will make you look

silly--because you're the great Somerled."

"By Jove!" he said, and his face flushed up. "If you say much more I

will do it--and hang everything!"

"I _do_ say much more!" I cried. "_Much_ more--and hang everything."

"Very well, then," said he. "Your blood be on your own head."

"My head's red enough already!" I giggled. "Oh, what fun! You are good,

after all."

"_Am_ I good, Mrs. James, or am I bad?" he asked, turning for the first

time to her, as if he were half inclined to change his mind. But she

only smiled. "I can't see that there's any real harm," said she. "It

does seem a pity that these poor people should have come all this way

and spent all this money for nothing, don't you think so?"

"I wasn't thinking of them. I was thinking of Miss MacDonald."

"I'm thinking of her too," answered Mrs. James, as seriously as if she

were deciding something important. "If you don't mind on your _own_

account, why----"

He laughed. "Oh, as to _that_!----Well, come along, Miss MacDonald----"

"Barrie," I reminded him.

"Barrie! On with our wedding toggery, and let's be quick, if we don't

want an audience."

He called the photographer rather sharply, and put him out of his

suspense. "You must thank the ladies' kind hearts," he said. "They can't

bear to have your scheme end in smoke. Tell us what you want us to do,

and we'll do it--anything in reason. But you mustn't expect the bride to

show her face. She must keep it turned aside."

"That'll be all right," said the man, "though, of course, we should have

preferred----But after your great kindness we mustn't ask too much----"

"Certainly you must not," Sir S. caught him up. And then the other

photographer, who had darted across the road to the chaise on hearing

the good news, opened a bundle that lay on the seat, and hauled out the

contents.

Mrs. James began to be interested in the game, and the people who lived

in the houses were delighted that they were not to lose their hoped-for

excitement. Luckily, as it was lunching-time for most travellers, the

road was empty, and it seemed likely that we might finish our play

without spectators. The only moving things in sight at the moment,

except our own group, were one cat, two dogs, and a vehicle even more

quaint than the chaise in front of the Blacksmith's Shop. It was a coach

like Cinderella's, though not so pumpkiny. It was drawn by two nice

brown horses who might have begun life as rats. On one rode a postilion,

and out of a window leaned an old man in a tall hat and a brown coat

with brass buttons and a high velvet collar and ruffles at the wrist.

His hair was powdered, and he wore a white stock wound round his throat.

If we had met him on the road, without an explanation, we should have

thought that we had gone mad, or had seen a ghost; but now we knew him

for the bride's angry parent pursuing her relentlessly with a coach and

pair. It did sound odd to hear this fine old English aristocrat bawl out

in a common voice, "Ain't ye ready yet--what?"

One of the photographers ran along the road and explained and

gesticulated. The coach stopped at a distance. I flew into the

Blacksmith's Shop to put on my wedding things, and Sir S. disappeared

next door with clothes under one arm and a hat under the other. I should

think no bride and bridegroom ever dressed in such a scramble.

Mrs. James, dimpling and fussing, hustled me into a green brocade gown

which smelt of moth powder, and was so big that it went on easily over

my frock. Then came a purple silk cloak with wide flowing sleeves and a

romantic hood. One of the photograph men stood by to direct us; and when

Mrs. James was putting the hood over my head, he stopped her. "Madam, if

I might ask the young lady to take the pins out of her hair," he begged,

quite red with eagerness, "we shall get a great dramatic effect if it

tumbles down with the pulling back of the hood, just as her lover helps

her out of the chaise."

Her lover indeed! Sir S. would have glowered; but I laughed, and out

came the hairpins, for the good of the game. I have always had to "make

believe" all alone, so it was extra fun having such a grand playfellow

as Sir Somerled--whether he liked it or not. And I determined that I

would _make_ him like it! I wanted him to play properly, and not be

stiff and disagreeable and grown up. He was ready before I was, and

waiting; for it took a little while stuffing all my hair safely into the

hood, and practising how to let it fall at the right moment. I hadn't

quite realized that my playmate was really handsome, in his dark, proud

way, till I saw him in a wavy brown wig with a ribbon-tied queue, a

broad-brimmed hat that sat dashingly on one side, shadowing his face; a

blue overcoat with a cape, and high boots drawn up to his knees. He

looked so splendid, and so young that suddenly my heart beat as if I

were really and truly in love.

"If you should look at yourself in the glass," I said, feeling shy, yet,

wishing him to know that he was nice, "you'd never say again that you've

outgrown romance. No one would suspect you of being anything so dull as

a millionaire. You ought to paint your own portrait in that costume."

"Thanks," said he, "I'd rather do you in yours." But I think he was

pleased.

The photographer and the postilion both came forward to help, but Sir

Somerled wouldn't let his bride be touched by them. He handed me into

the chaise himself, and sat down by my side. Off trotted our horses to a

little distance, and turned round again. The show was ready to begin.

Meanwhile, the others had been busy. They'd placed an anvil, real or

imitation, on the green in front of the house, for the pictures were all

to be taken out of doors. The blacksmith had begun to hammer away at a

horse-shoe, and that was our signal to dash up to the door. He stopped

hammering, pushed back his hat, and greeted us in pantomime. Sir

Somerled, playing his part well since it must be played, swung me out of

the chaise with an arm round my waist. Down fell my hood and my hair,

blowing round his face and hiding mine. He kissed my hand as the

blacksmith ran off into the house to get his book; and by this time I

was almost as wildly excited as if we had eloped. The camera was

grinding out photographs of everything that happened, no doubt, but just

then I forgot all about it, or that any one was looking at us. We

clasped hands over the anvil, Sir Somerled and I. As the blacksmith made

the motions of marrying us in haste, I looked across at my playfellow,

and at the same instant my playfellow looked across at me. I wanted him

to smile, and he would not! "Please _pretend_ you're delighted to marry

me," I mumbled. "Can't you see by my face how glad I am to get _you_?"

"So should I be to get you, if I were the fairy prince," said he, in so

kind a voice it was a pity the biograph couldn't snap it. I squeezed his

hand to thank him for playing up to me, and he squeezed mine to show

that he understood. I felt suddenly that we were the best and truest of

friends. Even meeting my mother can't make up for losing him out of my

life, though he has been in it such a short time, and strayed in only by

accident.

Whole we stood hand in hand, along came the red coach. Out leaped the

father, as the postilion drew his horses up, and the bride sought refuge

in the bridegroom's arms. It did seem real, and exciting!

"Too late! We're married," said I. But even that was not the end of the

play. The father had to threaten the bridegroom with his pistol, and the

bride had to throw herself between the two men. I can see now what fun

actresses have. I was quite sorry when it was all over and the biograph

men were packing up to go.

"We don't know how to thank you enough, miss," said the one who appeared

to be the leader, "for persuading the gentleman. If you'll give us your

address we'll send you reduced copies of the series of pictures."

An address! I didn't know what to answer, for at present I possess no

such thing, though I thought it would sound queer to say so. I looked

for Sir Somerled, but he had walked away down the road to our motor,

which was hiding from the camera. His back was turned to me, but I could

see that his suit-case had been taken down from its place, and he was

putting something in it.

"I don't know whether I ought to mention this, miss," said the biograph

man, "but you might be interested to know that the gentleman has bought

the costume you wore in the wedding-scene, and paid a good price for it.

That's what he's packing away now, I presume."

"Oh! And did he buy his own costume, too?" I asked.

"No, miss, only yours. I thought you might like to know."

I did like to know. And I supposed that Sir S. would tell me all about

it when he came back, explaining that he'd got the things for a model to

wear in some picture; but not a word did he say--which puzzled me so

much that all the sight-seeing inside the Blacksmith's Shop could not

take my mind off the mystery.

I sat in one of the marriage chairs, and looked at the pictures of the

old priests, and read about the many famous runaway couples since 1754,

beginning with Penelope Smith, the prettiest girl of Exeter, who married

Prince Charles of Bourbon, brother to the King of Naples. But all the

time I was thinking hard about myself and Mr. Somerled, and wondering

why he had secretly bought the wedding-dress.

The guardian of the house made us write our names in the visitors' book,

which Mrs. James thought exactly like signing the register at a proper

marrying. And I said, "If nobody ever asks me to be his real wife, I

shan't be as badly off as other old maids, because, whatever happens, I

have had my wedding--a wedding at Gretna Green!"

V

We had a bridal sort of luncheon in the car, which was shunted off the

highway into a green shadowed road abandoned to summer dreams. Mrs.

James and I were like the flowers of the field, and had given no thought

to food, or where or how we were to get it. We supposed vaguely that

when we grew hungry we should stop at some inn and eat; but Sir Somerled

had a surprise in the shape of an American invention called a

refrigerator basket, nickel-lined, with an ice compartment walled in

with asbestos or something scientific. He said that it had been a

present, and he'd promised to bring it with him on this Scottish trip,

which it appears he was ordered to take as a rest cure. On the lid of

the basket, in a conspicuous place, is a silver plate, saying, in

beautiful old English letters, "To Ian Somerled, from his grateful

model," and underneath a monogram "M. M." in the raised heart of an

elaborate marguerite. As we ate ice-cold chicken, salad, and chilled

wild strawberries of the north, Mrs. James began with a gay perkiness to

tease Sir S. about the "grateful model," whose name must surely be

Marguerite; but I put a stop to that. The hour after a wedding at Gretna

Green is no tune for talk of any woman-thing except the bride; and as I

may perhaps never be anybody's real bride, I insisted on my rights. This

carrying on of the Gretna Green game rather scandalized good Mrs. James,

but when she scolded me gently for my "childishness," Sir S. said, "Do

let her be a child as long as she can. It would be well for every one of

us if we kept something of our childhood all our lives. Just now I'm

finding childhood gloriously contagious. I don't know how many years

I've thrown off in two days' time, since this child princess commanded

me to play with her."

This nipped the scolding in its bud (not that I minded it), but I'm sure

dear Mrs. James still thought my bride-game had been played too long,

and she switched the conversation to the real romances of Gretna

Green--so breathlessly thrilling, some of them, that I was ashamed to

hark back to the subject of ourselves. Not that Sir S. wouldn't make a

hero for my romance. I feel that under his quiet, sometimes tired

manner, there's a hidden fire, and I want to find out what he is really

like, if I can. The study of such a man will be more interesting and

even more mysterious than peeping through the keyhole of the garret

door, into what I used to call "fairyland." Already that seems long ago.

No one would guess, who had only seen Mrs. James with Grandma, how much

the little woman knows, or how nicely she can talk, and I blurted this

thought out, before I stopped to reflect that it might sound rude. An

hour passed like five minutes in listening to her story of the Lord

Chancellor's wedding at Gretna, and Lord Westmorland's shooting of

Banker Child's horse, to save his young bride from capture by her

father; the tale of Robert Burns almost inveigled into marriage by a

pretty girl he met on the road; and best of all the exciting history of

the brave lass of Langholm, who ran through brooks and bushes to snatch

her lover at the last minute from a rival he was marrying in the

Blacksmith's Shop. This last anecdote had been "the doctor's" favourite.

One chapter of his history was devoted entirely to the Old Glasgow Road.

In it he gave three whole pages to the young man's bet and the two

lassies who were ready to help him win it. "The doctor was romantic at

heart," explained Mrs. James, sighing, and pausing with an ice-cold

chocolate éclair in her hand. "All romance appealed to his imagination,

and in his notes he gave much space to Gretna Green, from the day of

Paisley, the first priest, up to the present time, when couples marry in

the Blacksmith's Shop in fun and not in fear. But," she went on, anxious

to impress the great Somerled, "Doctor James gave space in plenty to the

serious history of the Road: the Raider episodes; the journey of Queen

Mary; the march of Prince Charlie's Highlanders in charge of

Cumberland's soldiers, on their way to prison at Carlisle; the tramping

of many penniless Scottish geniuses seeking their fortune in London

town; the visits of famous men like Scott and Dickens, and Edward Irving

the preacher, who made his bride get down from her carriage on the

bridge, and walk on foot into her adopted country, England."

Mrs. James always grows excited when she talks about the doctor and his

unfinished history of Scotland; and though she'd known Sir S. only a day

and a half, she was mesmerized into telling him secrets Grandma couldn't

have dragged from her with wild horses. She even showed him Doctor

James's photograph, which, in a shut-up velvet case, she had put into

the handbag Sir S. gave her. "Do _you_, an artist, with your great

knowledge of human faces and the souls behind them, believe a man with

those eyes and that forehead would take his own life to escape scandal?"

she appealed to him. "Wouldn't it be more natural to disappear, trusting

to his wife's faith, until he had made a new career somewhere and won

back the honour of his name?"

Very gravely Sir S. examined the photograph, which she had painted in

water colours, rather faded now; and I looked at it, though I've seen it

before. Apparently he was sincerely interested in her story, and in the

picture. But then he seems interested always, in a quiet way, in what

people tell him, never interrupting or talking of himself and his

affairs, as Grandma does if any one comes to see her. "You are right,

Mrs. James," he said. "That man is a dreamer, but not a coward. He might

do strange things, but never a contemptible one."

"Oh, what a judge of character!" she breathed ecstatically. "And how

sympathetic! It's wonderful, in the busy, flattered life you must have

led for many years, how you've kept your kind heart and generous thought

for others. But it's your artistic temperament!"

The great Somerled laughed and looked embarrassed. "My enemies say that

my 'artistic temperament' has been swamped long ago by my love of

money-making and getting difficult things to turn my way. I think the

enemies are probably right; but you and this princess would dig up any

decent qualities a man might have left, no matter how deep they were

buried under rubbish."

"How do we dig them up?" I wanted to know.

"By being children--both of you--in your different ways."

Then he gave Mrs. James back the faded photograph, with a few more

compliments on the doctor's eyes and the shape of his forehead. It was

time to be starting on, but the grateful dear would not accept his offer

of help in clearing up. She sent me away with him down the road to

gather a bunch of bluebells, azure as a handful of sky, to put into our

hanging vase--my first Scotch bluebells. And as soon as we were well

away, he began asking questions about Doctor James, which showed that he

really cared. What was his first name? How old was he when he

disappeared? And how long ago was that?

"His Christian name was Richard," said I. "It was seventeen years ago

that he disappeared--or died. And he must have been twenty-nine then,

because Heppie says he was too young for Mrs. James--only a year older

than she--which would make him forty-six now."

"You mustn't give her away like that," Sir Somerled reproached me. "I

should have guessed her seven or eight years younger."

"Ah, that's the massage and the skin food and neck exercises," said I,

wisely. "She _will_ be pleased when I tell her what a success you think

they are."

"She'll be much more pleased if you don't tell her you've mentioned

them, and I strongly advise you not to. Do you happen to know whether

Doctor James had a scar on the left temple?"

"Yes," I eagerly answered. "She's told me about it. That's why he turned

the right side of his face to be photographed. But why? Did you ever

come to Carlisle and see him before you sailed for America as a boy?"

"I came to Carlisle. I may have seen him," Sir S. replied. "But say

nothing to Mrs. James about this conversation of ours. Some time,

perhaps, I may tell you why. If not, it's not worth remembering. And

now, I see she's got everything ready, and is waiting for us. So is

Vedder. The car's had a good drink of petrol, and we can be off--for a

sight of Carlyle's country. Will that bore you?" He looked at me almost

anxiously, as if something depended on my answer.

"Bore me? Oh, no: I shall love to go there," I assured him.

"Why? What do you know of Carlyle?"

"Not much," I had to confess, "But there were three books of his my

father had, which I've read. And there's a picture of him still in the

library."

"Which books? What picture?"

"'The French Revolution,' and 'Hero Worship,' and 'Sartor Resartus,' It

was that last one I read first. I took it off the shelf because it had

such a queer name. I wanted to find out what it meant. Don't you always

desperately want to find out what everything means? I do. But I suppose

you know everything by now. Well, I began to read without being so very

much interested. Then, suddenly, my mind seemed to wake up. It was a

wonderful feeling, just as if I stood near to a man who was playing

marvellous and startling music on the grandest organ ever made. And the

man who played could sing too. He sang in a voice sometimes harsh and

sometimes sweet. It seemed to me as I read the book that it was humorous

and sad, tender and stern at the same time. And till the very end I was

carried along on the wave of that organ music, which had in it always a

thrill of the divine. I never found any other book in the library that

made me feel exactly like that, except Shakespeare--and Grandma had all

the Shakespeare volumes carted off to the garret after she came in one

day when I was eleven, and found me reading 'Macbeth.' As for the

picture of Carlyle, it shows him, sitting in a chair, with a look on his

face of a sad man alone in a gray world."

"Whistler's portrait! You shall have all Carlyle's works and

Shakespeare's for your own. I'll give them to you," said Sir Somerled,

looking at me with an interested look, as if suddenly he liked me better

than he had before.

"Oh, you _are_ good, and I should love to have them," I said. "But now

there'll be my mother I shall have to ask permission of for everything.

I must do just what she wants me to do, for I shall die if she doesn't

love me."

"Yes. I'd forgotten," said he.

"I hadn't, for a minute," I answered. "But I suppose, as mother is a

great actress, she loves Shakespeare and has all his works; and perhaps

she has Carlyle, too, in her library."

"Perhaps," he echoed.

"Don't you like her?" I asked. "You always look odd, and speak in a

short, snappy way when I talk of my mother."

"I like and admire her immensely," he answered, in that remote tone

which tries to frighten me, and does almost--but not quite. "All the

same, I don't think you'll find Carlyle in her library, so you'll have

to let me give him to you. But meanwhile, you shall learn to understand

him better by seeing the little village where he was born, and the house

his father the stonemason built."

So we started off in the car, going back to the highway and along a road

which perhaps would not have seemed extraordinary if it hadn't been made

surpassingly beautiful by men who lit the path of history with a shining

light. I had a gay, irresponsible feeling, sitting beside Sir S. on the

springy front seat of the luxurious motor-car, as if I were a neat

little parcel clearly addressed to my destination, and going there

safely by registered post. By this time even Mrs. James had ceased to

"bite her heart" when she saw another motor dashing toward us, or a man

sauntering across the road and filling the whole horizon. The car is so

singularly intelligent that you feel it is a friend, too kind-hearted

and chivalrous a creature to let anything bad happen. Of course, about

every ten minutes something _almost_ happens, but that is invariably the

fault of other people's cars. You dash up to the mouth of a cross-road

which you couldn't possibly have seen, because it is subtly disguised as

a clump of trees or a flowery knoll; and you discover its true identity

only because another motor--a blundering brute of a motor--bursts out at

fifty miles an hour in front of your nose. If you'd reached that point

an instant later, your own virtuous automobile and the wretch that isn't

yours would certainly have telescoped, and you'd have been sitting in

the nearest tree with your head in your lap. But already I begin to

notice that you may pretty well count on reaching the danger point

(produced by alien autos) at precisely the right instant, never the

wrong one, and this gives you a beautiful confidence in your luck and

your driver: although the real secret must lie in the acuteness of your

guardian angel or patron saint. Vedder, who when young was a champion

boxer, is very superstitious, and Mr. Somerled allows him a large gold

medal of St. Christopher on the dashboard. St. Christopher, it seems,

has undertaken the spiritual care of motor-cars, and as by this time he

has millions under his guidance, his plans for keeping them out of each

other's way must be as complicated as the traffic arrangements of a

railway superintendent. When I contrasted the angelic behaviour of our

car with the appalling perversity of other people's, Sir S. burst out

laughing, and said that evidently I was born with the motor instinct:

that he'd seen women who took days or weeks learning these great truths,

whereas I came by them naturally. "It's remarkable what a lot of

valuable knowledge can be picked up by an enterprising princess in a

glass retort, when the dragon isn't looking!" said he.

"Princesses in glass retorts are perhaps forced to learn lessons tabooed

by dragons," I replied to this; "so if I know things or have thought

things that every other girl doesn't think or know, it's because they

were forbidden fruit. They were my only fun."

"They've made you a splendid little 'pal,' if you know what that means,"

said he. "I'm not sure the glass-retort system hasn't some advantages

for the bringing up of women. The proverb is that truth lies at the

bottom of a well. I begin to think it may be looked for in glass retorts

in the land of dragons."

"You mean that I'm truthful?" I asked.

"Yes. I'm inclined to believe, up to date, that you've remained as

transparent as the glass of your late prison."

"What makes you think so?" I wanted to know.

"Observation--partly. And the way you talk to me."

"What way?"

"Well--that's a knotty question. I can hardly explain, but----"

"I wonder," I began to think out aloud, "whether you mean that I say

what comes into my mind without being afraid you mayn't like it?"

"Er--um--perhaps that covers a good deal of the ground. But what put the

idea into your head? Why should you be afraid of me?"

"I'm not. Only--I've thought that it would be more respectful if I were.

You are so celebrated, you see. That's the first thing I heard about

you--I mean, about your being such a famous artist. I heard you were

rich too, but of course that didn't interest me so much."

"No? That proves the benefit of the glass-retort system."

"Why--how, please?"

"Because princesses who haven't been bottled up in them, but have lived

in the lap of luxury--and in the laps of luxurious mothers--understand

the value of money, and consider men famed for their millions worth a

dozen who've wrapped themselves up in a few rags of some lesser kind of

fame."

"You call being a great artist a lesser kind of fame?"

"I didn't once. But since I've got into the money-making habit, I've

accepted the world's opinion."

"Pooh!" said I rudely. "I don't believe you have, because the first

minute I saw you, I felt sure you were a _real_ man. That's why I just

had to speak to you in the station, instead of one of the others. I

knew--by instinct, I suppose, as you say I know about motors. Think of

the glory of being able to _create_ beautiful things!"

"Think of being able to buy them! Jewels and castles and yachts, and all

sorts of things that women love. Motor-cars for instance."

"You could buy motor-cars with money you earned by painting pictures,

couldn't you?"

"Yes; but not castles or yachts: and not enough jewels to please

princesses who haven't spent eighteen years in a glass retort."

"Well," I said, "I may be no judge, but I think jewels and castles would

be a bother, and I should be seasick in yachts. Give me a man who brings

beautiful things out of his soul, not out of his pockets. You're very

nice now; but you must have been much nicer before you buried your

talents under the shields and bracelets you told me about. Even I know

what you mean by them--and what happened to Tarpeia."

"_Even_ you! I begin to think you were born knowing about a good many

things besides motor-cars. And you are entirely right. I was much nicer

before I began to collect the shields and bracelets."

"Can't you give a lot of them away, and do what I said--go back to the

time before you bargained for them?"

"You don't understand how difficult it is to go back."

"But you are back--in Scotland."

"You're right. Now's my one chance to return to my youth and ideals.

Bright little Princess, thank you for polishing up the dulled surface of

my soul."

"It's only the surface that needs polishing," said I. "The inside part

is shining, even when the outside looks dim. But I'm afraid you're

making fun of me?"

"I was never more in earnest. I'm crossing more than one border with you

to-day."

"Borders you like crossing?"

"Great heavens, yes!"

"I'm glad of that," said I, in a self-satisfied way, "for then you won't

miss Mrs. West so much."

"Miss Mrs. West? Good Lord, I'd forgotten her!"

"That's very ungrateful and horrid of you, then," I scolded him,

"because you and she were friends, and she knows how to be perfectly

charming."

"Yes. She knows how."

"She knows just what to do and say."

"Yes. She's an agreeable--and experienced--woman."

"And if it hadn't been for me, she'd be sitting by you now."

"I have little doubt of that."

"And you would have been happy."

"I should have been contented. There's a big difference between

contentment and happiness. You can't have learned it, yet."

"Oh, can't I! It's all the difference between--between--well, the

difference between this borderland seen on a dark day and seen on a day

of sunshine. It's the same landscape, but it doesn't look the same to

the eyes or give the same feelings to the heart. The dark-day feelings

would be calm and quietly pleasant; the sunshine feelings would be full

of thrills and heartbeats--as to-day."

"By Jove, you've hit it!" he exclaimed as if to please me by agreeing.

"Full of thrills and heartbeats--as to-day."

"Then you _do_ feel the romance of everything in this sunshine?" I

asked, quick to drag a "yes" from him while he was in the mood.

"I should say I did. And I'm not ashamed, with you to back me up. But

I've a sneaking idea I should have been ashamed of it with Mrs. West.

And I shouldn't have felt the thrills, only a calm, peaceful pleasure,

as in the gray days--contentment. I shouldn't have known what I was

missing, perhaps. I should have respected myself for outgrowing my

enthusiasms. But--in my best moments, Princess, I've pitied people more

for not knowing what they miss in life than for missing the things."

"Yes," I answered, "because it's better to know there are beautiful

things, and to want them in vain, than grub along without knowing of

their existence. But all that's got nothing to do with Mrs. West."

"Perhaps not. Yet it has something to do with me. No need to bother

about the connection."

"I won't bother about anything!" I laughed in my joy of life and of

motoring, which seemed one and indivisible just then. "I'm wrapped up in

the magic golden web that Sir Walter Scott and Burns have woven round

every mile of this land across the border--_our_ land, yours and mine."

"So am I, caught in the web, lost in it--to my own surprise." He laughed

as he drove, his eyes alert and young. "Burns, by the way, came to

Ecclefechan, where we're arriving now. He had an uproarious time, and

wrote verses to the Lass of Ecclefechan, which shows the place must have

been a good deal livelier then than now. Or else, which is as likely, he

had a faculty of squeezing the juice out of the driest, most unpromising

fruit--the same faculty you have."

"Perhaps the fruit dried up later," I suggested. "Burns died soon after

Carlyle was born, didn't he? And maybe people began to be primmer when

they were forgetting his influence."

"No. Those of us Scots who were meant to be dour were always dour," Sir.

S argued, "since the days of John Knox, and long before. It was partly

climate--partly persecution. Both agreed with our constitutions. But

look, here's the little house where one of the greatest geniuses who

ever saw the light in Scotland first opened his eyes. I dare say he

didn't get much light--but he spent most of his life in giving it to

other people, out of his own gloom. Wouldn't Burns have been interested,

passing that house (as he must have, in the 'uproarious time' at

Ecclefechan), if his prophetic soul had said, 'Here, in this little

dwelling as humble as your own birthplace, will be born a man as great

as you--and one of your keenest critics?'"

I didn't answer, because no answer was needed, and because we were both

gazing hard at a small, whitewashed, double house made into one by an

archway joining the two parts together. Coming from Gretna Green it was

on our left in the midst of a gray and white village which would have

looked commonplace if it had not been framed by an immense sky. It was

as if this vast blue crystal case had been set down over Carlyle's

birthplace to protect and mark it out from other places. There was the

narrow, high-banked brook--"the gentle Kuhbach kindly gushing by" (as

Sir S. quoted)--which had made music in Carlyle's childish ears, to echo

through them all his life. Perhaps he paddled in the brook on hot summer

days, just as little boys were paddling when our Gray Dragon suddenly

broke the respectable silence of Ecclefechan; and I know that he must

have seen stormy sun-rises and fiery sunsets reflected in it as in a

mirror, just as the Lady of Shalott saw all the things that really

mattered passing in her looking-glass.

It is the kind of village, and the gray or whitewashed houses with their

red door-sills are the kind of houses, where you would say, rushing

through in a motor, "Nothing can possibly happen." Yet Carlyle happened;

and he was an event for the whole world, which now makes pilgrimages to

his birthplace. And I think that when his memory travelled back to

Ecclefechan, he would not have changed it for a garden of palaces and

flowers and fountains. Even the wee bairns playing in the road where

Carlyle played, knew why we stopped our car. They pointed out the

Carlyle house, gazing at us in solemn pity because we were poor

tourist-bodies, who couldna bide the rest of our lives in the best

village in a' the wurlld.

For my part, I pitied them, because their feet were bare, whereas the

poorest children in my native Carlisle have wonderfully nice shoes,

bound in brass. But all the Scot--and perhaps the crofter--rose in Sir

S. when I mourned over the little dusty feet. "Do you think they go

barefoot because they've no shoes?" he asked. "You're wrong. You don't

know your own country-folk yet. They've as good shoes as those Carlisle

kids, and better, maybe. It's because they don't like the feel of the

shoes when they play, and they're saving them for Sundays. I did the

same myself. Not a pair of shoes did I have on my feet, except on the

Sabbath day, till I was turned eleven."

It seemed to me that suddenly he had quite a Scotch burr in his voice,

and I did like him for it!

An apple-cheeked old body opened the door. On it was a brass plate which

would have told us, if we hadn't known already, that in this house

Thomas Carlyle was born. Remembering what he grew to be and to mean in

the big world, the three tiny rooms and the few simple relics were a

thousand times more pathetic than if we'd been led through apartment

after apartment of a palace, seeing christening cups and things under

glass cases. They did not seem sad to me, only a little dour in a

wholesome way, as porridge is dour compared to plum-cake. But the

cemetery which we went to after we had seen the house made me want to

cry. I didn't like to think that, coming back here to sleep after all

those many years, Carlyle had not his wife to rest beside him. Lying

with his ain folk behind grim iron railings couldn't have consoled him

for her absence. This is the only graveyard I ever saw except the one

where my father is buried; and somehow, it doesn't seem respectful to

the dead to go and criticise their graves, unless you are their friends,

bringing them flowers--pansies for thoughts and rosemary for

remembrance. It's like walking into people's houses and opening their

doors to look at them in bed when they're asleep, and can't resent your

intrusion, though they would hate it if they knew. I said this to Sir

S., and he partly agreed with me on principle; but he warned me that

there are cemeteries I must visit in Scotland unless I want to miss the

last volumes of several interesting human documents. I don't know

exactly what a human document is; still, I suppose I shall go to the

graveyards for the sake of finding out what he means.

He spoke as if I were likely to go to these places with him, and said

that he would enjoy showing me Carlyle's house in Chelsea, which is

"more full of the man's heart and soul than Ecclefechan is." But, of

course, he said this without stopping to think. He will go back to

America and forget the forlorn little princess he happened to rescue

from a neighbouring dragon. Yet never mind, I shan't be forlorn after

this! I shall have my mother, and mothers are more important to

princesses than the most glittering knights. I shall, of course, travel

about with her wherever she goes, so I can never be lonely or sad. I

ought to be even more impatient than I am for the day to come when she

is due in Edinburgh, and I can surprise her there: but I suppose, having

lived without her so long, it is difficult to realize that I'm actually

to see her at last. However, I think of her every minute--or perhaps

every other minute; and I haven't fully realized until to-day how much

there is for which I have to thank her: the gayety and hopefulness she

must have kept in her heart, and handed down to me. Without gayety and

hopefulness neither of us would have dared or cared to run away from

Hillard House.

I think, far-fetched as it seems, it was seeing Carlyle's birthplace,

and feeling the influence of his parents upon him, which made me

understand. Great genius as he was, I wonder if he might not have been

even greater if his mother or father had taught him that it was right to

be happy and wrong to be sad? Sir S. says that Jenny his wife could have

taught him all that, if he had chosen to learn; but he was grown up

then, and so it was too late. The sunshine must be in your blood when

you are a child, and then no shadows can ever quite darken the gold--or

at least, that is the thought which has come into my mind to-day.

It was the right thing to turn southward off the Glasgow highway after

Ecclefechan, to go to Annan and see the place where Carlyle got his

schooling. The Gray Dragon, travelling slowly (for it, or "her," as Sir

S. and Vedder always say), came to the end of the journey in a few

minutes; but when Carlyle walked along that pleasant shadowy road,

carrying his school books, he must have had plenty of time for

day-dreams. Now and then he could have seen the Solway gleaming, and I

can imagine how the beautiful, winding river must have given that grave,

wise boy thoughts of the great river of life, running to and from

eternity. We passed close to Hoddam Hill, where--Sir S. and Mrs. James

told me--the Carlyle family lived for a while when Thomas was grown up,

he translating German romances, and his brother working on the farm.

At Annan, looking at the statue of Carlyle's friend, Edward Irving, in

the broad High Street, we came back to the subject of Doctor James, and

I heard for the first time the real truth at the bottom of the bad

gossip.

We had got down from the car to look at the statue, and read what it

said on the pedestal. We were not thinking at first about the doctor,

but only of Edward Irving, and Sir S. was saying to Mrs. James how Annan

was only one of many towns where statues are put up to the memory of men

once misunderstood and cruelly persecuted in the very place where they

are afterward honoured. It seems that Edward Irving (who loved Mrs.

Carlyle when she was Jenny Welsh) had to come back to his native town to

be tried for heresy by the presbytery, after a brilliant career in

London as a fashionable preacher and founder of a new faith. All the

theologians of Scotland and crowds of other people (Sir S. says all true

Scots are theologians at heart) came pouring into Annan by coach and

chaise on the great day of the trial; and in spite of Irving's

passionate appeal, he was found guilty by a unanimous vote.

Talking of the trial, and of the preacher's death the next year, took

Mrs. James's mind to the subject which is never farther away than at the

back of her head. She found a likeness between Edward Irving's fate and

her husband's. "Richard was born in Carlisle and loved the place, but

they believed evil of him and persecuted him," she said. "Some day he

will come back and make Carlisle proud of her son. That's what I expect.

That's what I live for." And she gazed up at the statue of Irving the

preacher with quite the look of a prophetess in her eyes.

I was afraid that Sir S. would think her mad; but he seemed interested,

as before, and asked if she had in her mind any particular kind of

success her husband might be working to obtain. Was there something,

apart from his profession, and the unfinished volume of history, which

had occupied the thoughts of Doctor James in old days?

The little woman answered this question almost reluctantly, and I soon

guessed why. There was a serum which the doctor had been trying to

perfect. It was to be used instead of chloroform or ether, for people

with weak hearts, or when for other reasons anaesthetics were dangerous.

A patient in peril of death had begged Doctor James to try it upon him.

The doctor had consented. The patient had died, and though it was not

really because of the serum, but because the man couldn't possibly have

lived in any case, the doctor's enemies had blamed him. "That was what

broke his heart," Mrs. James explained, still staring at the statue with

wide-open eyes, to keep the tears from falling. "That is why he died to

the world which misjudged him."

"And do you think, if he can perfect this serum, he will come back?"

asked Sir Somerled.

"_When_, not 'if.' But I always knew it would take a long time, because

unless some rich person or people had faith and helped him, he would

have to get together a good deal of money for a laboratory before he

could make a great success or a great name. And he went away almost

without a penny."

"I see," said Sir S., thoughtfully. "Well, such faith as yours is enough

to inspire a man with courage to push the stone of Sisyphus to the top

of the hill. And it deserves a high reward. I hope the reward may come,

and that I may see the day. Now, we must go on, for this afternoon won't

last as long as I could wish."

He helped Mrs. James to her place with extra kindness, almost

tenderness, tucking behind her back the gray silk-covered air-cushion

which she says makes her feel she is leaning against a nice pudding.

Neither of us had asked Sir S. what we were to see next, for we trusted

him to choose; but when we were ready to leave Annan and go back to the

high road, he said that the thought of Galloway was haunting him. "We

can spin on to Glasgow by way of Moffat and see a lot of interesting

places; or we can turn west from Carlyle country, for a run through

Crockett country," he explained. "Which, shall it be?"

I was ashamed to confess that I didn't know why he called Galloway

"Crockett country"; but Mrs. James saw my sheepish look, and excused me.

"The child has had no novels to read later than Scott."

"Crockett has done for Galloway what Scott did for Tweedside," said Sir

S. "It's his country. He has made it live. When I give this girl the

promised present of Carlyle and Shakespeare, I must add Crockett. That

is, as she reminded me"--and he smiled--"if Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald

allows Ian of that ilk to lay gifts at her daughter's feet."

"Oh, she'll permit Barrie to accept books," said Mrs. James, with her

pretty primness. "How the child will love the 'Raiders,' and the 'Men of

the Moss Hags.' Yes, certainly she ought to see 'gray Galloway.'"

"Galloway be it, then," said Sir S., looking pleased. "But it won't be

gray at this time of year. It will be purple and gold and emerald, and

silvered with rivers running between flowery banks. And it will smell

sweet as a Scotsman's paradise, with bog myrtle and peat."

"I too have often wanted to see Galloway," said Mrs. James, "even before

I read the Crockett books; for the doctor devoted a particularly

interesting chapter to its history. I remember well, the ancient name

was most romantic: Gallgaidhel, for the country of the stranger Gaels.

That was the heading he gave his chapter, and I fear I did not know what

'stranger Gaels' meant until I read it. The Celtic Gaels who lived there

used to be called Atecott Picts; and though they were very independent

and wild, and the Romans didn't govern them long, they accepted the

Northumbrians as their overlords--oh, it must have been in the seventh

century, I think. And two hundred years later they made common cause

with the Vikings: so the other Gaels, who would have nothing to do with

the foreigners, scornfully named the men of Galloway 'stranger Gaels.'"

"It was just jealousy, then!" said I. "Because the people of Galloway

were so broad-minded and hospitable, and ahead of their times. It's the

right country for strangers to visit first----"

"But we're not strangers," Sir S. cut me short. "You and I, Barrie, are

coming into our own. To-night for the first time you'll sleep in your

ain countree, under the 'heather moon.'"

"It ought to be a wonderful place, for our first night of the heather

moon," I said, half shutting my eyes--"a mysterious, beautiful, _lucky_

place, to remember always. What shall it be? Have you decided on what is

appropriate?"

"I'd thought of Dumfries," he said. "But it doesn't answer that

description, and though it's in Galloway, it concerns Burns and is out

of Crockett land. Still----"

"Sweetheart Abbey!" Mrs. James exclaimed rapturously. "It should be at

Sweetheart Abbey that Barrie dreams her first Scottish dreams."

The knight laughed rather bitterly for some reason. "Are Scottish dreams

different from other dreams?"

"Perhaps," said Mrs. James, "they are the dreams that come true."

VI

It is days later, it seems a long time ago that I wrote of our plan to

spend the first night in Scotland at Sweetheart Abbey--a long time since

the night itself; for I have lived more in these few days than in all my

life before.

Soon we are to reach Edinburgh. Monday is the day when my mother will

begin acting there in her new play. I shall see her. It is to be the

Great Day of all, the day to which all the others have been leading up,

and I ought to be perfectly happy. So I am! Still, there's one little

heavy spot in my heart. All the yeast of happiness won't make it light.

The beginning of the new means the end of the old. The trip will be

over--for me; though the Knight and the Gray Dragon will go on and have

hundreds of adventures without me. They will be my knight and my dragon

no longer. Perhaps I shall never see them again.

Before our days together slip away into the background of my mind (it

seems as if they never could!) I want to write down things about them to

keep and read when I am _old_.

First of all, there was Ruthwell Cross.

We went there from Annan; and as we flew along in the car over a good

white road, we could see across widening waters the mountains of the

English Lake country floating like a mirage along the southern sky,

Skiddaw with its twin peaks higher and bluer than the rest. How I love

the names of the Cumberland places and mountains! I made Sir S. say

Helvellyn and Blencathra and Glaramara over very slowly, just for the

music in my ears. And when his voice says a thing it sounds particularly

well. I like to hear it roll out such a word as Northumberland, for

instance. The way he says it makes you think of thunder on great

moorlands, or a rush of wild Scotsmen over the border. But the Celtic

names he speaks most lovingly, most softly, so that they ring on your

ear for a long time after they are spoken, like an echo of fairy bells.

I did not mean to write all this about him and his voice when I began.

There is so much else to say. Yet, somehow, I keep running back to him

in my thoughts, especially now the trip is nearly over. And while I

still cling to the subject, I have found out that he can sing as well as

paint. But the singing belongs to Sweetheart Abbey; and Ruthwell Cross

came before.

Mrs. James and Sir S. excited my interest in Galloway by telling me bits

from the "Raiders," then stopping in exciting places to talk of

something else. And somehow Galloway does seem a country where almost

anything might happen--big, sensational, historic things. There was

nothing gray to see except glimpses of the Solway, where the sea poured

in its resistless tide; and that was the gray of polished silver. I had

an impression of high hills, blunt in shape yet strangely dignified, and

wide-spreading moors which sent out exquisite smells like lovely unseen

messengers to meet us, as the car seemed to break through crystal walls

of wind. Here and there were piles of pansy-brown peat, ready for

burning. Children with heads wrapped in scarlet flame ran out of

cottages to stare at us. Sir S. actually admired their red hair. He

exclaimed suddenly, "By Jove, it's worth crossing the ocean to see that

glorious stuff again! It's the hair of Circe." I don't know when

anything has made me feel so much like a kitten that purrs over a dish

of cream. For you know the hair he loved was _just_ my colour, not a bit

less scarlet. What would Grandma say?

It rained once--sharp rain like thin daggers of glass stabbing our faces

as the car dashed through--and the wet road looked like a shining silver

ribbon flung down anyhow on purple velvet. The purple velvet was

heather, and I never saw any before we started on our trip, except a

little sad, tame heather in the garden of Hillard House--heather

moulting like a bird in a cage, with all the spirit of the moors gone

out of it. But this Galloway heather was real heather, the heather of

poetry; and I knew that by and by I was going to see the heather moon

rise over it. The very thought brought a thrill--and I was glad, as I

had it, that Mrs. West was somewhere else in her own car. She does so

damp you, somehow, in your high moments, and make you feel too young for

anybody to care for your crude little thrills or take them seriously.

When the rain stopped, it left a thin white mist floating over the

heather, until the sun broke out and the deep purple was lit to crimson,

like a running fire.

I'm not quite sure if all this happened before Ruthwell Church (called

Rivvel by the people near), but in my memory it is part of the same

picture, of that first day in Galloway.

I know we skimmed through a little place called Cummer-trees, and then

Sir S. slowed down to show us, he said, one of the "sights of the

world." He had never seen it himself, but he knew all about it, and even

Mrs. James knew a little. It is a great advantage to a simple woman to

have had a clever husband, and feel obliged, to live up to him.

We had come not so much for the church as for a wonderful stone cross

which it contains, as a jewel-box contains treasure of pearls and

diamonds. This cross is worth countless numbers of both; and it has a

history as intricate as its own strange carvings.

In the manse they gave Sir S. the key of the small old church behind a

high wall with steps up and down: and once inside he led us straight to

the north end, where, in a side aisle, we saw a great shape rise. We

must have known it to be a marvel, even if we had heard nothing

beforehand.

The cross used to stand, not in the church, but out in the open long

before the church was built, and it towered eighteen feet tall against

the sky. There it lived year after year, generation after generation,

and nobody knew what its carved birds and beasts and hieroglyphic

inscriptions meant. Nobody cared much, until a gloomy set of men in a

General Assembly, when Charles I was King of England, threw it down and

broke it up, because it was an idolatrous emblem. Luckily, some wise

person hid all the pieces in the church; but after a while another

person not so wise threw them out into the backyard. There they stayed

until a Doctor Duncan thought he would have the cross put up in his

manse garden: and some great Norwegian scholars, to whom he sent copies

of the writings, grew very excited, and contradicted each other about

them in 1802. But no one knew what the letters really meant till the

eldest son of the famous actor John Kemble came to the neighbourhood for

a holiday. He was a learned authority on Anglo-Saxon times, and he

discovered that the writing was really Early English, the very earliest

of all, the rudiments of the language which--as Sir S. expressed

it--"Chaucer helped to form and Shakespeare perfected"; because they had

to _make_ their words, as well as group them together--which is all that

lazy authors have to do nowadays. The quaint carvings relate to the life

of Christ and saints, and they are described in Latin from the Vulgate;

but it was the runic inscriptions which John Mitchell Kemble puzzled

out--a kind of rhymed soliloquy the cross itself was supposed to speak;

and afterward he found the whole thing in an Anglo-Saxon MS. of the

seventh or eighth century, far away from Scotland, in a library at

Vercelli, near Milan. But it was written by the Northumbrian bard

Caedmon, in a poem called "The Dream of the Holy Rood."

No wonder Sir S. wished to see Ruthwell Cross. There's nothing else of

the kind, he thinks, so splendid anywhere.

Even then my first wonderful day in Scotland wasn't over, for we had

time to see Caerlaverock Castle, which, according to Sir S., is another

of the best things on earth. I suppose, in old days, when the world was

small because it was difficult to travel great distances, it didn't seem

odd to find magnificent runic crosses, and castles, and historic

blacksmiths' shops, and houses of geniuses all standing cheek by jowl

within a step of each other. They had to be like that, or nobody from

the next county would ever have seen them: but now, especially to a

person who has seen nothing except in dreams, it is startling, almost

incredible.

Caerlaverock, Mrs. James said, was probably Scott's Ellangowan in "Guy

Mannering"; so I shall read "Guy Mannering" as soon as I settle down to

live with my mother. We couldn't help getting a little mixed up with

Scott even here, at the gate of the Crockett country; and there were

traces of Burns too, because of our being near already to Dumfries,

where he lived for years and finally died. But the idea Sir S. had set

his heart upon was for us to come back to Dumfries after we had seen

Galloway and had run up to Burns's birthplace at Ayr. It would make each

part of the trip more "concrete," he said.

Whether or no the stronghold of the Maxwells was Ellangowan, it was in

any case the key to southwest Scotland, and in looking at the place it

is easy to understand why. A great red-gold Key it was when we saw it,

red-gold in the western sunlight in a hollow near the river; such red

and gold colour as the old sandstone had, in contrast with the green of

lichen and green of waving grass, I wouldn't have believed in, if I'd

seen it in a picture. I should have said, "The artist who painted that

ruined castle put on the colours he would like to see, not those he did

see." But I should have misjudged him, because the colours were real.

Once there was a double moat all round the vast, triangular castle, and

still there's water in one of them. You would have thought the Maxwell

ladies had thrown their rubies and diamonds into it one wild day when

they were escaping from enemies, and that the jewels had lain ever since

at the bottom of the moat unnoticed, though the sunlight found out and

treacherously tried to tell the secret. Think of Ptolemy writing about

Caerlaverock, and calling it Carbantorigun! I'm glad we haven't to call

it that now, or I should always have to say _it_--as one goes on saying

"you" to a person whose name one hasn't caught.

Even if Caerlaverock were in hideous surroundings, it would be

magnificent: but the river Solway is its silver foreground, and Lochar

Moss is its mysterious background; so it is perfect in beauty as in

strength, and if only no such hateful things as cannons had been

invented, it would not now be a ruin. Although it lies so low, it was

built to resist everything but gunpowder: for how could the Maxwells

dream that all their beautiful arrangements for pouring down molten lead

and boiling oil would be useless against a new foe?

Edward I took the castle in 1300, but Bruce got it back thirteen years

later; and there was much fighting and tossing back of the Key from one

hand to the other even before the great siege when the Earl of Essex

punished Lord Herries for defending Queen Mary. Still, the walls stood

bravely, and after the Essex affair they were made stronger than

ever--so strong and so splendid it must have seemed as if Caerlaverock

need never capitulate again to any enemy. But no sooner had the Maxwells

finished a lovely new façade, the best they'd ever had, with carved

window and door caps of the latest fashion, than Colonel Home came along

with his grim Covenanters and blew up everything with his horrid

cannons. I can't help disliking him, for the Maxwells seem to have been

the most fascinating people. One Lord Maxwell of the seventeenth

century, who was Roman Catholic when it wasn't safe to be Roman

Catholic, used to disguise himself as a beggar, and play the fiddle in

the market-place of Dumfries as a signal to tell the faithful of his own

religion where and when they might come to Mass. They understood

according to certain tunes agreed upon, which was easy, as they had only

three meeting-places. A nice old man in the castle told us these stories

and showed us the exquisite courtyard where Burns came one day when he

was seventeen and cut on a stone in the wall the initials R. B. in a

triangle, like a masonic sign, which suggests the wedge shape of the

castle.

Sir S. knew all about this carving, and said that Americans had offered

two thousand pounds for the stone. But the Duchess of Norfolk, who is

mistress of Caerlaverock in her own right, turned up her nose,

metaphorically speaking, at the offer. "I bid ye fair:" is the motto

that goes with the crest over the huge gateway between two towers, and

the rumour is that the Americans, in bidding for the stone of the

initials, quoted this motto; but their aptness did them no good. In one

of those towers Murdoch, the blind Duke of Albany, was imprisoned for

seven years by James I before he was executed at Stirling; and they say

that in the green hollow where the great red ruin glows he can be seen

walking in the moonlight on the anniversary of his beheading.

One of my favourite stories in history is about Lord Nithsdale and his

brave, clever wife who saved him on the eve of his execution by dressing

him in her clothes and letting him walk calmly out of the Tower of

London in her place. Think of being able to do such a thing for a man

you loved! He was one of the Lords Nithsdale who came from Caerlaverock;

and not far away, at Terregles House, is a portrait of that Countess of

Nithsdale, with the cloak which her husband wore when he escaped. They

have a Prayer Book, too, of Queen Mary's in that house, for she gave it

to Lord Herries, who sheltered her in her flight after the battle at

Langside, eighty miles away. But we didn't see these things. It was the

old man at the castle who told us of them, because they are still in the

keeping of the Maxwell family, of which he is very proud.

We hurried quickly through Dumfries, not to see or think of the Burns

associations there until we should come back; but at Lincluden Abbey,

close by, we were forced to think of him--although, as far as our trip

was concerned, he wasn't born. At Lincluden, where he loved to come,

walking out from Dumfries (as he must have walked to Caerlaverock to cut

his initials) he saw the Vision. And Lincluden is so sweet a place that

my thoughts of it, mingling very humbly with the great poet's thoughts,

will lie together in my memory as pressed flowers lie between the pages

of a book.

The road which leads from Dumfries to Lincluden seems like a quiet

prelude to a lovely burst of music, so gentle and pretty it is. Then

suddenly you come to the promontory stitched on to the mainland with

great silver stitches of rivers, the Cluden and the Nith; and there are

old earthworks, fallen into ruin, which guard the Abbey as the skeletons

of watch-dogs might lie guarding a dead master. There's a mound, too, by

the side of the ruined church, and it is called a Mote, which means

something desperately interesting and historic, and there's a Peel-tower

in ruin. Indeed, all is in ruin at Lincluden Abbey; but that makes it

the sweeter and sadder. And as we came, the red of the crumbling

sandstone burned in the fire of sunset like a funeral pyre heaped with

roses. The melancholy, crowding trees and the delicate groups of little

bushes were like mourners coming with their children to look on at the

great burning.

We went into the church to see the tomb of Margaret Countess of Douglas,

who was a daughter of King Robert the Third; and somehow the mutilations

of the effigy made it more beautiful, causing you to see as in a blurred

picture the thousand events of troublous times which had passed over the

figure, leaving it through all peacefully asleep. A daughter of a king,

with the Douglas Heart to guard her, she would be too noble in her stony

slumber to show that she minded losing her features and a few other

trifling accessories which might spoil the looks of less important

women.

When we came out, high in the sunset glory gleamed a silver sickle,

reaping roses. It was the heather moon, and I cried out to Sir S. as I

saw it, "Wish--wish! Your first sight of the heather moon, and over our

right shoulders for luck! Whatever we wish _must_ come true!"

I was so excited that I seized his hand; and he was too polite to give

it back to me like a thing he didn't want. So he held it firmly in his

while we both looked up to the sky, silently making our wishes. My wish

was to be that my mother might love me; but I stopped and thought, "What

is the good of making such a wish, when I've only one, and I'm sure to

get that one without the heather moon, as mothers all love their

children." This caution was very "canny" and proved my Scottish blood, I

couldn't help thinking, as I paused in order to select the most

appropriate wish for the heather moon to grant.

Several ideas presented themselves with a bow: a wish to be happy: but

that wasn't "concrete" enough, as Sir S. would say. A wish to be very

rich and able to do anything in the world I might like to do; but being

rich sounds so fat and uninteresting--or else bald-headed; for nearly

all the photographs in picture papers of desperately rich people are one

or the other, or both. At last I began to be nervous, for if Sir S. or

Mrs. James (who was close by) should speak before I'd given my wish to

the new moon, she'd be unable to grant it, even with the best

intentions. That is a well-known fact in connection with wishing by the

moon. I have it on the authority of both Mrs. Muir and Heppie. Being in

a hurry, I grew confused, and so could think of nothing more important

than to wish for my knight never to forget me in future, wherever he may

be. And just as I'd finished, he said, "Well? What did you wish?"

Of course I couldn't tell him such a wish as that; but, luckily, you

must never let anybody know what you've wished by a moon or a star, if

you want the wish to come true.

I explained this to Sir S., and he said, as far as he was concerned, it

didn't matter, for he hadn't wished after all. "Oh, what a waste of the

heather moon!" I cried, for it really seemed too bad. But he answered

that the only thing he particularly wished for just then was a thing

which wasn't fair to wish, on account of the 'other party concerned.' I

laughed, and said if he had _wished_ to wish, he had wished, in spite of

himself, and the heather moon had heard; because that's the business of

any well-trained new moon, and the heather moon is the best-trained of

the year. "'The other party concerned' must just take the risk," I said.

"And very likely 'twill be the best thing for him, her, or it in the

end."

"I daren't hope that," said he, looking up at the silver sickle as

earnestly as if we weren't talking nonsense.

"Don't you think the heather moon knows best?" I reproached him. But he

did not answer, and only hummed under his breath, as we walked to the

waiting car:

"How far, how far to Gretna?

It's years and years away--

And coach-and-four shall nevermore

Fling dust across the day."

All the way along the shadowy, switchback road from Dumfries going to

Sweetheart Abbey (I like to write the name, it is so pretty and

old-fashioned) we had glimpses of the moon scattering silver through the

tree branches as she fell down the west. I thought the soft white curve

like a baby's arm, rounded at the elbow; and it waved us good-night over

the heather-clad mound of Criffel, as a baby might wave over the fat

shoulder of a big nurse dressed in purple. It is _cheek_ of Criffel to

call itself a mountain, and of course it wouldn't dare to if there were

other real mountains within twenty-five miles.

When I made this remark Mrs. James asked me where, in my sequestered

life, I had got hold of such an unladylike word as "cheek," but I told

her I must have been born knowing it, as there was never a time in my

memory when I didn't. Also Mr. Douglas had used it several times in

Carlisle Castle.

"Haven't you forgotten him yet?" asked Sir S.

"It would be silly to forget, and have to make his acquaintance over

again at Edinburgh," I said. "He asked me particularly to think of him

during our trip whenever I should see the Douglas Heart. Now I have just

seen it at Lincluden."

"Douglas Heart indeed! Douglas cheek!" I heard Sir S. mutter.

There is one part of that road between Dumfries and Sweetheart Abbey I

shall never forget: the view from Whinny Hill--a sudden view springing

from behind trees, as if a green curtain had been pulled back from a

picture. In this picture there were the silver Nith, and purple Criffel

of course (which always tries to get itself noticed wherever you turn),

a great forty-foot monument put up to commemorate Waterloo; and again

the red triangle of Caerlaverock glowing on the green shore of the

Solway Firth.

I suppose the people who were shy of seeming sentimental insisted on

calling Sweetheart Abbey New Abbey. I can imagine Sir S. voting for the

change, because I fancy that he would endure torture rather than be

thought sentimental. He describes a place or a thing or a person

glowingly, then hurries to cap his description with a few joking or even

ironical words, lest he should be suspected of romance or enthusiasm.

The village is called New Abbey too, so it is safe to mention that to

the driest person. It was just beginning to be evening, an evening

softly gray as doves' wings folding down, when our Dragon sidled toward

an inn it saw, quite a nice little inn, where Sir S. announced that we

would stop the night. Before going in, however, he took us to look at a

queer bas-relief built into the wall of a whitewashed cottage on the

left side of the road. It showed three ladies industriously rowing a

boat across the ferry--pious dames who brought all the stones from

Caerlaverock, on the other side of the Solway, to build the Abbey.

"Rock of the Lark" is a delightful name, but Sweetheart Abbey is

prettier, and the reason of the name is the prettiest part. Only I wish

that the devoted Devorgilla who built the Abbey of Dolce Cor to be a big

sacred box for the heart of her husband had had a worthier object of

worship than the king, John Balliol. All the history I have ever read

makes him out to be a weak and cowardly and rather treacherous person;

but, as Sir S. said, "Mirabeau judged by the people and Mirabeau judged

by his friends were two men"; and I suppose John must have put himself

out to be charming to Devorgilla, or she wouldn't have wandered about

with his heart in an ebony box inlaid with silver, and insisted on

having it on the table in front of her when she ate her dinner. That was

one way of keeping her husband's heart during her whole lifetime--and

even after death, for of course she had it buried with her. It must have

been glad of a little rest by that time, the poor heart, for it had so

much travelling to do. I suppose it even went as far as Oxford when

Devorgilla founded Balliol College.

The last shaft of the sun was turned off the rose-coloured ruin and the

secluded valley where the cross-shaped Abbey hides from the world; and

the moon was gone, too, swept away like a tiny boat on a wave of sunset.

Still, it was full daylight, and Sir S. announced that he had a plan.

This plan was for us to go (as soon as we'd seen our rooms, which he had

engaged by telegram) and get permission to enter the Abbey by twilight,

when no one else was there.

The little gray inn of the town looked no bigger than a good-sized

private house, but it was the very first hotel of my life, and I

regarded it as an Epoch, with a capital E. That point of view was upheld

later by the heavenly scones and honey they gave us--heather honey, gold

as the heather moon. And we had cool, clean rooms, suitable for the

dreaming of sweet dreams. _My_ dreams there seemed very important.

The great Somerled can of course get anything he wants to ask for if he

chooses to reveal himself--anyhow, in Scotland; because already I am

beginning to learn that even the smallest or humblest Scottish peasant

knows all that's worth knowing, not only of the past but of the present,

and has heard of all the celebrities. Maybe there might be miniature

places in England, America, Germany, or France where the poor and

uneducated would know nothing of Somerled the painter and millionaire.

But in Scotland, apparently, though there are many poor, there are no

uneducated persons. Those to whom his being a painter would mean nothing

would be interested in his money. Those who didn't care for his millions

of dollars would have read about his painting: and all would value him

because he belongs to Scotland.

As soon as our luggage was in our rooms and dinner ordered, Sir Somerled

inquired if we were ready for the Abbey; but Mrs. James mildly asked if

we would mind going without her. She had begun to realize that she was

tired, and would like to rest. She could go by herself to the Abbey

early in the morning before starting time. I felt that I ought to mind

more than I did, but I couldn't help liking to be with Sir S. alone. It

seemed like the night of our first meeting; for some one had always been

with us, more or less, ever since. It was only a short stroll through

the village, not enough to call a walk. A dear little lady who lives in

a nice cottage close to the ruin opened the iron gate, but she did not

go in with us, because it was time for her supper. She had a photograph

done from one of the great Somerled's most famous pictures, and if he

had been a long she could not have been more polite.

At first, the inside of the shell-like Abbey with the beautiful name was

a disappointment. The green grass was encumbered with tasteless graves

and flat modern stones which looked as if they had lain down there

without permission.

We wandered about rather forlornly for a while, until we found

Devorgilla's thirteenth-century tomb. Sir S. told me her history, and

waked the sad old place to living interest. I seemed to see the

ever-loving lady, followed by her chosen maidens carrying the heart in

its ebony and silver box. And together we made up a theory, that of

every event _something_ reminiscent lingers on the spot where it

happened. If only our eyes were different, we should be able, wherever

we went, to see filmy, mysterious pictures painted on air--fadeless,

moving photographs of all the people and all the deeds which have made

up the world's history.

This set us talking of our own pictures, which we are leaving behind us

as we go through life; and I couldn't help thinking how he and I, in

accordance with this idea, will for ever and ever go on being "married"

at Gretna Green. I laughed at the thought, and he asked me why, so I

told him.

"When you're marrying your real wife, years from now maybe, and have

forgotten my existence, that scene will still be enacting itself," I

said, "not only on the films the photograph men took, but on air films.

Doesn't it frighten you?" I asked.

"Doesn't it frighten you?" he echoed. "Because you will marry. I never

shall."

"How do you know?" I catechized him.

"If I can't have the wife I want, I'll have none."

"Perhaps you can have the one you want if you ask her nicely."

"I don't intend to ask. I'm not the right one for her."

"You might let her decide that!" I nobly said, for Mrs. West may be the

woman. "I do hope, if men ever love me, they'll tell me so."

"No fear! They will." He laughed more loudly than I have heard him

laugh.

"But the right one mayn't, if he thinks as you do."

"He won't. He'll be thinking only of himself. But look here, my girl, be

sure you _do_ take the right one when you marry; for if in my opinion

you're likely to make a big mistake when the time comes, I may be

tempted to put a spoke in the fellow's wheel."

"Please do!" I laughed.

"You think I'm joking," he said, watching me in a way he has, between

narrowed lids, his eyes almost black in the twilight. "And so I am to a

certain extent. Yet I might forbid the banns, perhaps--if I chose."

"But how?"

"Haven't you any idea?"

"Not half a one."

"Then I won't tell. It would only worry you--for nothing. Marry in

peace, when your Prince comes, and I'll send you my blessing--from far

away."

"I don't like to think of your being far away," I said. "Let's not talk

of it. For you are my only friend--except Mrs. James. And you're so

different."

"I thank Heaven!" he said. "And I thank her for wanting a rest. Good as

she is, three would be a crowd in Sweetheart Abbey."

Speaking of her made me think of the time. We had promised Mrs. James to

go back in half an hour for dinner! Already more than half an hour had

slipped away as we made our air-film photographs to haunt Sweetheart

Abbey with all its other ghosts.

The twilight was changing to a light more mysterious, and as we looked

at each other through the opal haze I felt strangely that we were

changing too. It was as if our realities were less real than the shadow

pictures which were to live on here together forever--as if our bodies,

which would go away and separate, to live different lives far away from

one another, would not be _us_ any more.

I could not have imagined so wonderful a light as that which illuminated

the great rose-window and filled the vast broken shell of the Abbey. It

was as if the day had been poured out of a cup, and night was being

slowly poured in--the dove-gray night of dreams. It was pale, yet not

bright like the light of dawn. It was more like a light glimmering over

a sheet of water, a light made of the water itself. Almost I expected to

see the Heart rise up in the ebony and silver box, and the box opening.

"You look like a young seeress," my Knight said. "What is it that you

see with your great eyes gazing through the dusk?"

"I see--a heart," I answered. "I think I see a heart."

"That is very intelligent of you," he said, in a changed tone. "Come,

child, it's time I took you home."

"Is there the ghost of a heart floating here?" I asked, wishing to

linger. But he took my hand and drew me toward the gate.

"To me," he said dryly, "it appears to be a real heart--almost too real

for comfort."

We walked back to the inn, and he was uninterestingly commonplace all

the way. He talked about dinner, and buying petrol for the car, and told

me dull facts about tiresome things called carburettors. It would have

been a horrid anticlimax, spoiling all the romance of Sweetheart Abbey,

if he had not changed later on. But he did change. There was a little

piano in the sitting-room they gave us, and Mrs. James began drumming

out a few Scotch airs, warbling the words in a high, thin voice rather

like that of an intelligent insect. There was one tune I knew, and I

couldn't resist joining in. At the end Sir S. applauded.

"What a pity her grandmamma wouldn't let her take lessons, as I once

ventured to suggest!" said Mrs. James. "She has a true ear, and a sweet

voice wonderfully like her mother's, which I quite well remember. But

Mrs. MacDonald had the idea that music lessons would lead to vanity.

Don't you think, sir" (she often slips in a respectful "sir"), "that her

voice would repay instruction?"

"I do," pronounced the great Somerled.

"I'm sure _you_ sing," went on Mrs. James. "I flatter myself I can

always tell by people's faces."

"Like Barrie, I never had lessons," he said. "But I suppose we

Highlanders are born with music in our blood."

"Then you do sing?" she persisted.

"Only to please myself. Not that it does!"

"Will you sing to please us?"

"It wouldn't please you."

"Barrie, _you_ ask."

"The Princess commands!" I said, not expecting him to humour my

impudence, but he did, by going at once to the piano. It had lisped and

stammered awkwardly for Mrs. James, but it obeyed him as if the keys

were mesmerized. He played a prelude, and then sang "Annie Laurie," in a

soft, mellow voice, so low that people outside the room could hardly

have heard. It seemed as if there must really be an "Annie Laurie" in

his life. Surely a man could not sing like that, and look like that in

singing, unless he called up the face of some woman he loved. I wondered

if he thought of Mrs. West, who is so very pretty, and rather like the

description of "Annie Laurie." His eyes looked far away as he sang,

through the wall--oh, yes, I'm sure they could see through the wall at

that moment--perhaps as far as "Maxwellton Braes"; perhaps still

farther, searching for Mrs. West wherever she might be.

I don't know how it would make one feel if such a man with such a voice

looked into one's eyes and sang a song of love. I'm afraid it might make

one rather foolish. But it was only at the wall that Sir S. stared until

he began a very different song--the lament of a Highlander who would

nevermore see his island home nor the love of his youth. It was a

heart-breaking song; and though his voice was pitched so low it was

almost like singing in a whisper, there was a strange, vibrating power

in it, as there is in the strings of a violin touched but lightly by the

bow. Sir S. transferred his attention from the wall to me as he sang

this sad old ballad, and I could not look away, because there was the

same compelling power in his eyes as in his voice. No doubt it was only

of the song he thought, not of me at all, really; yet I could not shake

off the haunting impression of the look, and it made me dream of him all

night. I saw him standing beside me in the strange, pale twilight of

Sweetheart Abbey. And in his hand was a box of ebony, inlaid with

silver, which he held out. But when I took the box it was locked, and he

had no key. "Only the key of the rainbow will open this box," he said.

And then I woke up, feeling somehow as if the dream were of importance,

and I must try to find out why.

VII

Next morning when I saw Sir S. I felt confused and vaguely ashamed, as

if something had happened. But, of course, nothing had happened, nothing

at all. I kept on reminding myself of that until I was at ease again.

And his manner helped me to realize how silly I was, for almost he

seemed to go out of his way to put on the commonplace air I had

disliked. It was as if he wrapped himself up in a big, rough coat,

smelling of tobacco smoke, and rather old and shabby, with the collar

well turned up.

We started early, long before eight, and Mrs. James remarked, while we

were dressing--calling out from her room to mine through the open

door--that there was more credit for Sir S. than for us in liking an

early start. Many men as successful and flattered and rich as he, she

said, would have grown luxurious in their tastes, and lazy. They would

loathe getting up at six, and staying in tiny hotels, and fussing about

to help their chauffeurs when anything went wrong with their cars. They

would hate so much having to pack bags and look after themselves that

they would find it impossible to enjoy travelling without a valet; but

here was this man, used to every luxury, and able to command it, putting

himself to trouble of all sorts and even enduring hardships as

cheerfully as a "little bank clerk out for a holiday with his sister and

aunt."

I agreed with her, and I suppose bank clerks are as interesting a class

as any; but I'm glad Sir S. is not one. And it is more fun being his

princess than his sister. Mrs. James may be his aunt if she likes. I

wouldn't be it for all his millions.

He asked her again if she would like to try the front seat, but she

politely refused, and then, with his rough-coat, turned-up-collar-air,

he invited me to take it. Something deep down in me, like a little live

creature whispering, told me to make him turn down that collar and throw

off that rough coat. It did seem such a _waste_, to have him wearing his

commonplace airs while we travelled through the most adorable country we

had seen yet. I wanted him and me and the scenery all to be romantic

together, and so I told him at last. "But if I'm determined to keep on

the safe side of romance?" he said.

"If you've decided to be dull and disagreeable," I threatened, "I shan't

give you the 'rainbow key' when I find it. I'll hand it over to somebody

else."

"Will you?" he said. "Be sure the somebody else deserves it, then."

This annoyed me. Because I'm looking for the rainbow key for _him_, not

somebody else. "At present I don't happen to know anybody else I'd care

to give it to," I remarked.

"Ay," said he, "there's the rub. You know so few. But it will be

different when the princess has a dozen knights all in the competition."

"Perhaps other knights won't notice that I'm a princess."

"Judging from what I've observed, I think they'll be quick to notice

that."

"Well, it remains to be seen."

"Just so. It remains to be seen." His voice sounded sad or bored, so I

tried to be tactful for once, like Mrs. West, and changed the subject.

This was the road which Carlyle thought the most beautiful in the

kingdom. Going to Mainsriddle and Dalbeattie we skimmed through dark,

haunted-looking woods, to sudden glimpses of far-down yellow sands and

floating forms of mountains. The tide was running out or running in,

veining the floor of gold with misty blue traceries, and making bright

pools like bits of broken glass. The trees along our way were a

procession of benevolent giants holding green umbrellas over our heads,

because they mistook us for expected royalties; and on the smooth white

surface of the road they had scattered shadows like torn black Spanish

lace. Criffel followed us everywhere, trying jealously to keep us from

noticing that the noble mountains of Cumberland were still watching us

out of sight, across the Solway Firth. And indeed, Criffel, with some

small brother hills he had to-day collected, like the hasty gathering of

a clan, did manage to destroy the effect of distance so far as he and

his brethren were concerned. He and all the rest, no matter how far off,

pushed themselves into the foreground by means of their colour, so

violent a purple that it struck at the eyes, and vibrated in the ears

like rich wild notes of an organ rolling over the uplands of Scotland.

Only the sands and the sea looked distant, though really they were near;

and I worried about the groups of cattle gossiping so pleasantly

together about their cuds and calves. They had a placid air of ignoring

such large facts of life as incoming tides, and could never have read

what happened to Mary and her cows on the sands of Dee, a resort only

less fashionable in the cattle world than their own.

Lights on sky and sands, seen through the netting of tree branches, were

like sweet bursts of laughter in the forests; and the glory of the

heather was a wordless song in praise of Scotland. Yet in these flying

Galloway landscapes there was an impression of the mystic and

melancholy, which reminded Sir S. of "The Twilight of the Gods": strange

purple rocks jutting out into water coldly bright as a sheet of mercury,

and desolate islands remote and haunted as the place where Gunter and

his sister lived in the opera. We seemed to be travelling through vast,

lonely places, though it was but a part of Galloway, and all Scotland is

but small--just large enough to give an eyeful of beauty always.

When we came to the sparkling granite town of Dalbeattie (a miniature

Aberdeen, Sir S. called it) instead of going straight on toward

Kirkcudbright we turned westward to see the great stronghold of the

Black Douglases. It was no more than seven easy miles to Castle Douglas,

a little modern town all laid out in rectangles. Sailing straight

through, we came out on the edge of Carlingwark Loch, which rings a few

green islets with silver; and taking a side road we were close to the

river Dee. There, on a cushion of an island, only big enough to hold it,

rose the great ruin of Thrieve Castle, the home of the proud and

magnificent Douglases. Once boats must have carried the knights and

ladies back and forth between the mainland and the fourteenth-century

fastness of old Archibald the Grim. But now I saw a line of

half-submerged stepping-stones, the only way of crossing in these days

when there is no fighting or feasting at Thrieve, and no "tassel"

dangling from the knoblike "hanging stone" over the great gate.

"Workers of high-handed outrage!

Making King and people grieve,

O the lawless Lords of Galloway!

O the bloody towers of Thrieve!"

Sir S. quoted as we stared up at the giant keep, seventy feet high, with

its tremendous walls. "They were a terrible power in the land, that

family, at their greatest, when they lorded it over Galloway and

Annandale, and owned Touraine and Longueville in France, and used to

ride out with a retinue of a thousand picked horsemen."

"That nice soldier yesterday--Mr. Douglas at Carlisle--thinks they were

a _charming_ family," said I. "He has an old proverb something like

this:

"So many, so good as of Douglases have been

Of one surname in Scotland never yet was seen."

and he told me a great deal about the Douglas Heart."

"He would!" mumbled Sir S. "There were good hearts and bad hearts among

them, but all were great hearts in the old days; anyhow, I'm not

surprised that Crockett got inspiration from this place when he used to

play here, coming over from Castle Douglas, where he was at school. He

must have had his head buzzing with story plots when he'd climbed up

inside the walls and crawled out to sit astride of the hanging stone.

I'll warrant he saw Maclellan beheaded in the courtyard while Sir

Patrick Gray, the King's messenger, supped with Douglas; and heard Mons

Meg fire off the first granite cannon-ball, that shot away the hand of

the Countess as she held a wine-glass up, drinking confusion to her

enemies. No wonder little boy Crockett got absent-minded one day, when

he dropped his watch instead of a pebble in wanting to test the time the

stone would take to fall."

The next bit of Crockett-lore I heard was at Auchencairn in the deep,

indented bay we'd reached by turning south for the coast again. There,

it seemed, we were in the heart of Crockettland, for Hestan Island is

the Rathan Island of the "Raiders." All round was sweet, welcoming

country, low mountains and rippling meadows, where it seemed that the

Douglas soldiers had laid their glittering helmets down in long straight

ranks on a carpet of cloth o' gold. Over these fields of garnered wheat

came a breeze from the sea, with a tang of salt like a tonic mixture,

and there was a murmurous sound on the air, a message from the tide.

There were hundreds of historic things to see, in every direction, if we

had had time for all: traces of the Attecott Picts; Pict forts and

tombs, castles of the Middle Ages; robber caves; Convenanters'

monuments; and at Balcarry, near Auchencairn, the landing-place of the

smuggler Yawkins, who was Scott's "Dirk Hatteraick." But we had only

five days for everything before the Great Day--which will be coming so

soon now. From Auchencairn we turned inland to a rolling country where

the Gray Dragon would be down one hill and halfway up another before he

knew what had happened. At Dundrennan--"Hill of the Thorn Bushes"--he

had his first mishap; but after the surprise of thinking a bomb had

exploded, I was glad he'd seized just that opportunity of bursting a

tire, because it gave us more time for the Abbey than we should have

given ourselves.

While the chauffeur made the dragon's toilet, patching up a fat white

foot as he might have doctored the pad of an elephant, we wandered

about, and finally decided to lunch in a secluded corner of the

twelfth-century ruins.

Mrs. James and I set out our picnic-table, a folding thing that Sir S.

carries in the car, and we counted on having the place to ourselves.

Tourists though we are, we scorn other tourists. But it seems incredible

that such as they can scorn us. We talked about Queen Mary and of her

last meal within those walls, and it felt sacrilegious to laugh and joke

where she had been so sad. We pictured her, young and beautiful, taking

leave of the loyal men who had begged her in vain not to trust

Elizabeth; and we could fancy the town turning out to see her vessel set

sail--a very different town it would have been then from the charming

little place it is to-day, with its low white cottages half covered with

flowers, the spotless walls as clean as damask tablecloths, and all so

gay and bright to the eye that grim Dundrennan Abbey in its midst is

like a skull fallen in a rose-garden.

"Ah," sighed Mrs. James, shaking her head, with a jam puff in her hand,

"if the Queen had listened to Maxwell she might have lived in safety to

be an old woman!"

"True, she might have kept her head," Sir S. agreed, comfortably cutting

himself a piece of plum cake; "but if she'd taken Maxwell's advice,

instead of sailing from Port Mary, never to see Scotland again, wouldn't

the whole civilized world miss its best-loved heroine of romance? No

other woman since history began has so captured the hearts of men, and

made herself so adored through the centuries, in spite of all her

faults, or because of them. Mary Stuart and Napoleon Bonaparte are the

two figures in history of whom no one ever tires of talking or reading."

"Still, we must be sad at Dundrennan, where her last night in Scotland

was spent," Mrs. James mildly persisted, having eaten her puff while Sir

S. argued. "I wonder if Michael Scott the magician, who lived here (he

comes into the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," you know), had prophetic

visions of Queen Mary and her fate? I should think so, for he had the

secret of all sorts of spells. The people of the neighbourhood believed

that he'd locked up the plague in an underground room of the Abbey, and

for years they dared not excavate for fear the demon should leap out and

ravage the country. They used to think they could hear a rustling----"

At that instant we heard one ourselves; a distinct rustling fell upon

our ears, and made us turn round with a start. The plague we feared was

tourists; but if it had been Michael Scott's demon, with a scarlet body

and a green head, I should have liked it better than Mrs. West's pale

purple coat and motoring bonnet. I don't know how Sir S. felt about the

surprise, but that was _my_ feeling, though I was glad to see her

brother. I find him the nicest thing about Mrs. West.

"Who would have thought of running against you?" she exclaimed, as Sir

S. jumped up from the table and shook hands as cordially as if there had

never been that mysterious row. "We've come from Port Mary, where Basil

sentimentalized over the stone Queen Mary stood on to get into her ship.

We haven't the patience to make our notes before luncheon! We're _so_

hungry, and there's such a lot to write about King David--_do_ you think

he built the Abbey, or was it Fergus, Lord of Galloway?--and all this

architecture which interests Basil even when he's starving! We've

brought our own sandwiches--we won't bother you----"

Of course Sir S. and Mrs. James both protested that having them was a

pleasure, not a bother. As for me, I remembered that little girls should

be seen and not heard, so I said nothing, and ate the nicest cake for

fear Mrs. West might get it. Sir S. gave his place at the table and his

folding-chair to Mrs. West, and finished his luncheon, standing up, with

Mr. Norman. After all, Mrs. West didn't seem to be hungry. She ate

scarcely anything, and when Sir S. asked her to have some ice-cold white

wine from the refrigerator basket, she said with a soft, sad smile, "'I

drink to thee only with mine eyes.'" Then, suddenly, hers filled with

tears, so they were liquid enough for a good long drink! She looked down

again quickly, with a blush which gave her complexion a peach-like

bloom; and Sir S. made haste to question Mr. Norman about the hired car.

But I could see that he was embarrassed and distressed, and wondered

more than ever what their quarrel was about. Sir S. wouldn't listen to

me the first day, when I said it was my fault, and I oughtn't to go in

his car. I'd almost forgotten that, it seemed so long ago; but I

remembered when I saw the tears in her eyes, and heard the strained

sound in his voice. Even Mr. Norman didn't look happy. Mrs. James was

the only one not affected. She ate her luncheon with a good appetite,

which the sorrows of neither Mrs. West nor Queen Mary could take away

from her.

When we had finished, Mrs. West asked Sir S. in a gentle hesitating way

if he would mind explaining to her the beautiful Gothic doorway at the

south side of the church. It was such a chance to find a great authority

on architecture, like him, upon the very spot, for she and Basil were so

ignorant, they always feared to make mistakes in their notes. Sir S.

went like a lamb led by a chain of roses, but apparently Mr. Norman

didn't feel the same need of expert advice. He stopped with Mrs. James

and me, and helped us clear the table. When we'd packed everything up,

he offered to take the basket to the car; and, as the others hadn't come

back, I went with him, carrying the folding-chairs, which were not much

heavier than three feathers.

"Have you remembered my advice?" he inquired. "Have you begun to write?"

"Yes, a little," I said. "What about your book?"

He shrugged his shoulders, looking melancholy.

"Won't the plot come right?" I asked.

"No. Nothing comes right."

"What a pity!"

"Yes, it's a pity. But I can't help it."

"Can't Mrs. West help?"

"She's not in the mood. Not that it's all her fault. Probably it's just

as much mine. We're getting on each other's nerves--and that's new to

us. There won't be a book. There can't be a book as things are."

"Yet you're going on with your trip?"

"Oh, yes, we're going on with our trip. Aline wouldn't give that up."

"If it hadn't been for me," I said, "it would have been all right for

you both. I feel a _beast_! I've spoiled everything."

"You're a witch, and you've bewitched us. Yes! That's what you have

done."

"Thanks for your polite way of putting it," said I. "'Witch' is a nicer

epithet than 'beast.' I wish--I almost wish--I'd never seen any of you!"

"I don't," said he. "And I don't believe Somerled does. To go back to

the time when we didn't know that the witch-child existed would be going

back from electricity to candles."

"You have a pretty way of poking fun at me," I laughed. "But I suppose

you mean I've given you all a shock. Well, you'll soon be rid of me.

Three days more, and the end! But I do wish I knew how to mend matters

and make you and your sister happy again, at once."

"I could tell you how," he said quickly.

"Do, then! You've just time, if you hurry up before the others come."

He looked round, and there were Mrs. James and Mrs. West walking toward

us with Sir S. They were very near.

He hesitated, and his face grew red. "Will you promise not to be angry?"

he almost whispered.

"I promise! Tell me."

"If you want to make everything come right for everybody in a minute,

you must turn your attention entirely to me."

"What good would that do?" I asked stupidly.

"It would do me all the good in the world, because, as I told you,

you've bewitched me. It would do my sister good because--well, because

she's particularly anxious for you to like me. And it would do Somerled

good because--it might teach him his own mind--bring him to his senses."

"I don't understand one word you're talking about!" I broke out.

"It doesn't so much matter what you understand as what you do. Dear

little Miss MacDonald, will you try and be very, very kind to me,

for--everybody's sake?"

"Of course," said I. "But you must call me Barrie."

"Thank you! That's one step. Will you call me Basil?"

"If you like," I answered. "Basil and Barrie! Don't they sound nice

together?"

Just then the others came up and heard what I said, which made me feel

foolish, as they'd missed the first part. But Mrs. West beamed at me. I

had been thinking that Basil Norman was the sort of man I should love to

have for a brother, but Mrs. West as a sister I could _not_ stand!

"Basil and Barrie _look_ nice together too, don't they, Mr. Somerled?"

she remarked.

"Very," said he dryly. And the next thing I knew was that she was

sitting beside him on the front seat, and I was tucked in beside Mrs.

James, with Basil Norman opposite. Their motor, it seemed, was not

behaving well, and Aline was nervous, so Sir S. had suggested, as we

were all going on to Ayr, that they should come with us for the rest of

the day.

I felt rather dazed about everything, and I'm afraid made a hash of the

scenery in my mind, until I had calmed down. I remember that we swept

through Kirkcudbright, which was named for St. Cuthbert because his

bones were once in the church. They were taking them on somewhere else,

but I don't know why. Basil told us all about it; but it sounded so odd

to hear him talking instructively of saints and Covenanters and martyrs,

and "the torch of religion being first lighted in Galloway," after he

had been begging me in a very different voice to "be nice to him," that

it muddled up my intelligence. I liked the town because it was pretty,

with graceful spires and lovely, ivied ruins; but I didn't care much

about the saints, or even about the last Lord Selkirk, for whom they put

up a Celtic cross in the Kirkcudbright market place; and I couldn't be

bothered pronouncing Kirkcudbright correctly. Of course it's done in the

last way you think it possibly could be, like all other Scottish names!

I brightened up a little at the story of Paul Jones at St. Mary's Isle,

because pirates are always nice, and he was classic. Besides, it was

amusing of him to fail to kidnap Lord Selkirk and steal a silver teapot

instead. To please Benjamin Franklin he gave the teapot back, so he

didn't get much out of that adventure!

I remember too that there were hills on the way to Gatehouse of Fleet,

hills which turned their backs and reared on their hind legs as we saw

them in the distance; but always they knelt meekly in front of the Gray

Dragon, as if he beat them to their knees. They were not so

accommodating to the hired car which followed. Something was the matter

with its internal economy. It grunted and groaned and emitted

evil-smelling fumes because it couldn't digest its petrol. Basil named

the creature Old Blunderbore, but said he would not dare to call it so

before its chauffeur-owner, who glared behind his goggles when it was

blamed for anything.

Gatehouse of Fleet looked, according to Basil, like places in Holland,

because sailing ships were apparently moving through fields, and masts

mixing themselves up with tree branches. Suddenly we had plunged into

Scott country, sandwiched in with Crockett, for Gatehouse is the

"Kippletingan" of "Guy Mannering." There was a sweet, sad smell of the

sea; and I heard Mrs. West ask Sir S. if it didn't remind him of "that

last night on the ship, when we told each other things?"

About this time, I think it must have been, we began to see so many old

castles dotted about the landscape that at last we almost ceased to

notice them. It must have been nice living in one of those box-like

fortress castles in old days, when all your friends had them too; so

jolly and self-contained. And, as a matter of course, when you built one

you had a few dungeons put in, just as one has plenty of bathrooms now

in a big house. If you were of a dramatic turn of mind, you placed your

dungeons mostly under your dining-hall, so you could hear the starving

prisoners groan while you feasted comfortably. We passed several dear

little towns, too, which I should like to have for toys, to keep in

boxes when not playing with them. On most of the houses were charming

chimney-pots of different colours, exactly like immense chessmen, set

out ready for a game. All the men in these towns looked almost ill with

intelligence. Most of the girls were very pretty, with little coquettish

features contradicted by saintly expressions, and even the dogs appeared

well educated and intellectual.

At Newton-Stewart a change came over the houses, but not the people or

animals. I felt that the smallest child would know more about books than

I did; and there was hardly a nondescript face to be seen. All could be

classified in historic Scottish types. But the whitewashed, thatched

cottages in the suburbs would have looked Irish if they had not been too

preternaturally clean. In the streets of Newton-Stewart there was not so

much as a stray stick or bit of paper. It looked to me a deeply

religious place, and Basil said perhaps it was trying to be worthy of

St. Ninian, who first brought Christianity to Scotland. He was a native

of the Solway shore, but went to Rome, where they liked him very much

and made him a bishop. Then he felt impelled to convert his own people,

so he sailed from France and landed at the island of Whithorn, which is

now an excursion place from Newton-Stewart. That sounds irreverent, but,

after all, an excursion is only a kind of pilgrimage; and even if people

are catching fish or eating them, they can be pleased to be at the one

place in Scotland where Christianity has gone on without interruption by

Vikings or others for fifteen hundred years.

Then, besides, Newton-Stewart has a monument of Samuel Rutherford to

live up to. And they ought to have one of his namesake, Samuel

Rutherford Crockett, who has done so much for Galloway.

It was in honour of his "Raiders" that we took the longest way to Ayr.

Some of the best things in that book happened near Loch Trool, so we

wanted to see Loch Trool. Bruce was there too; but this was a Crockett

tour. We should have gone perhaps, even if the run had been dull, for

it's only thirteen miles from Newton-Stewart, paradise of fishermen, to

the hidden lake; but the thirteen miles turned out to be a panorama of

beauty. Sir S. was surprised by its loveliness, though he knew by heart

Burns's poem, "The Banks of the Cree." We did not come at once to the

river; but from House o' Hill (delicious name!) we plunged into a wild,

forgotten paradise. The road lay under an arbour of trees like an

emerald tunnel, with a break here and there in the green wall to show a

blue shimmer of mountains and hills in the distance. We seemed to have

slipped into the hole leading to fairyland and pulled the hole in after

us; but I knew I was not going to enjoy getting there as much as if my

gray bonnet and coat had been on the front seat instead of Mrs. West's

purple beauties. It was suddenly that we came into sight and sound of

the river, and so deep was the stillness that we might have strayed into

the haunt of a sleeping nymph. Nothing moved but the rushing brown

water, and there was no sound, when we stopped to listen, but its joyous

song and the humming of bees in bracken and heather.

Basil can "make believe" more easily and less stiffly than Sir S.,

because he is an author, and used to stringing whimsies together. He and

I "pretended" that the bees were a fairy band, playing to a hidden

audience in a theatre roofed with the silver sheen of arching ferns.

Wafts of perfume came to us, cooled in woodsy dells, or warmed on

sunshiny banks of flowers; but not a soul could be seen anywhere, nor a

house. We knew that this was an inhabited world only by the wires

stretched across the river for the sending of letters and parcels.

Sunset-time had not nearly come yet, but already a silver slit was torn

in the blue of the sky; and for the second time the heather moon was

smiling its bright semicircular smile, as if to say, "Make the most of

me, Barrie, _your_ time is short!" Yet how could I make the most of her

when I could see only my knight's back, with a purple shoulder as close

to his as possible, and the heather moon was _ours_?

Suddenly Basil said, "Oh, there's your heather moon! I thought of you

yesterday after it rose until it set, and wondered what you were doing.

I do believe this _is_ different from other moons. Don't you see, young

as it is, how it has power to change the yellow of the sunlight, seeming

to alloy it with silver?"

I did see, but thought I must have fancied the effect, until he saw it

too. (We often think and see and say the same things, which is nice, but

not so exciting as the society of a man who thinks different things and

makes you argue.) The silver pouring down from that small crescent

seemed to sift through the strong golden light in a separate and

distinct radiance. It shimmered on the sea of waving hills and billowing

mountains that opened out before us, as if sprinkling a glitter of

sequins over the vivid green and amber and purple. Wherever there was

shadow this pale glimmer painted it with ethereal colours, like the

backs of rainbow fish moving under water. I might have jumped out of the

car and found the rainbow key, but nobody wanted it now!

"Just as that young, young moon has power to shine through the strong

afternoon sunlight, so a girl may all in a moment throw her influence

over a group of people older and more experienced than herself," said

Basil, smiling at me, and then at Mrs. James, as if he didn't mind her

hearing the flowery compliment.

"I don't know any such girl in real life," said I; "but you might work

her up for your book."

"I shall have to put her in, if the book's to be written," said he.

By and by we came to the lake, or, rather, far above it; and Sir S.

stopped the car to let us get out and look down. The water was a clear

green with glints of purple, as if beds of heather grew underneath.

There were jagged, bare rocks, and rocks whose shoulders were half

covered as if with torn coats of faded brocade, dim silver of lichen,

and pale pink of wild flowers. I hoped that Sir S. might join me for a

look at the heather moon lying deep in the lake like a broken bracelet,

but he didn't come. He looked at me very kindly from a distance, not

coldly, yet not warmly, and he stayed with Mrs. West.

It was Basil who told me about Robert Bruce and his men hiding here, and

rolling huge stones on the heads of the English soldiers who marched

along the bank of the lake in search of the "outlaws." It seemed as if

nothing terrible could have happened in so sweet a wilderness; but that

was not the only horror. There were other wild deeds in history, and in

the story of the "Raiders," memories of hunts for Covenanters, and great

killings. But now all is peace, and I should have thought Loch Trool

forgotten by the world if, in a dell of birch, rowan, hazel trees, and

great pines like green umbrellas, I had not spied a roof.

Sir S. said it was the roof of Lord Galloway's shooting-lodge, loved by

its owner because it was "out of tourist zone." So much the worse for

tourists! So much the better for Lord Galloway!

I should hate to think of the road to Loch Trool smoking with motor

dust. Of course our own Gray Dragon's pure dust is a different matter!

As we ran out of Crockett land into Ayrshire we came into Wallace land;

for every foot of Scotland is taken up twice over by something or

somebody wonderful. There isn't an inch left for new history-makers. If

we could see those "emanations" Sir S. talks of--those ghost

pictures--as far as the eye could reach we should see men marching,

splendid men and women, too, who have made the world shine with their

deeds, processions coming from every direction, out of the dim beginning

of things up to the present day.

After the wildness of Loch Trool we had a country of plenteousness and

peace. Basil said it was like a Surrey set down by the sea, so I suppose

Surrey has big trees and flowery hedges and rolling downs, purple with

heather. But surely no heather can be as purple as Scottish heather?

The sands of Girvan seemed to float like a golden scarf on the blue sea,

and the town looked a romantic, mediæval place till we shot into it.

Then we were disillusioned as to its age; but Ailsa Craig was noble in

the distance, and a few members of the gull colony had flapped over to

give town dwellers and visitors a sad serenade. "Gulls, golfers, and

geologists all love Girvan," Basil said.

"Have you put that down in your notebook?" I inquired.

"Not in those words. But I jotted down something about this town in

advance from authorities I've looked up. I generally keep two books

going: one in which I put the things I want to see, and ideas for plots

sometimes tangled up with a sort of diary; and another book of thoughts

about places I have already seen--thoughts I can weave into a story in

one way or another."

"You haven't once written in either of your books to-day!" I accused

him.

"No. I told you I'd given up note-taking for the present. I'm all at

sea. But just now it's a beautiful if not very calm sea."

"When it quiets down you'll begin again," I consoled him. "How I should

love to see a real, live author's notebook! It would be so _useful_ to

know how you manage to--to----"

"Record impressions," Mrs. James helped me out.

Smiling, Basil took from a breast-pocket a small green morocco volume

with a pencil slipped into a loop. Compared to Mrs. West's pretty book,

his was a shabby thing; but it smelt of good cigarettes.

"I'm afraid this will disillusion you," he said, "if you expect

something interesting. I simply make notes of things I want to see, or

jot down thoughts to recall pictures to my mind. Reading over one's

notebook is like glancing over a lot of kodak films. Sometimes one

sticks in a lot of nonsense."

I opened the little volume, and ran my eyes down the short pages.

"Carlisle, Saturday, August Something or Other. Notes for Scotch Tour,"

I read aloud. "Story of honeymoon. English hero--American girl. Aline

wants her Canadian. I see her American. Dispute. Must decide soon.

Reading up Galloway makes me want to go there. Aline says rush straight

on to Ayr, and save time. Hate saving time! Worst economy. More time you

spend, more you have. Must go along coast of Ayr, anyhow. Once lined

with strongholds of great families. See Dunure, Crossaguel, and deuced

lot of others.

"Keats visited Burns's birthplace. Wrote sonnet there. Look this up.

"Burns sought out, along banks of Ayr, places where Wallace was supposed

to have hidden. Good stuff this. Wallace fought all over the place here.

At Irvine, one of his earliest exploits. Kindled big fire, neighbouring

village. When English soldiers marched forth to put fire out, jumped on

them and killed the lot. Stuffed bodies into dungeon of castle at

Irvine. Called 'Wallace Larder' after that. Nasty larders people had in

those days. Read up account Douglas Larder. Compare the two. See which

worse. Why not call Barns of Ayr Wallace Oven? Read up Blind Harry for

picturesque story Barns of Ayr. Far as I remember, English enticed all

neighbouring Scots to powwow of some sort. Wallace expected; delay on

way. Scots executed on some pretext. When Wallace turned up, niece

warned him. He routed up few followers, set fire to barns and burnt

English, who were celebrating triumph over Wallace and his men. When get

to Ayr look this up further.... Word 'Whig' comes first from Ayr. Wonder

why? Look up. Also get Burns glossary. Dialect difficult. Aline won't

read Burns. Fear she's going to fail in this book. Thinks only of one

thing. But no matter. Courage, mon brave!

"Sunday. Had batch bad notices of last book from America. Aline gone to

bed with headache as usual after bad reviews. Says we must economize.

She'll forget when we start and want best suites of rooms with baths

everywhere. I _know_ that book was good. Hang notices! Understand so

well what Job meant when said, 'Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!'

He wanted to criticise it. Each new boil would suggest scathing epithet.

"Monday. Everything changed. Old plot exploded in thousand pieces.

Mustn't be honeymoon couple. Heroine radiant young girl, eighteen, hair

red as Circe's, eyes of new-born angel, comes like bombshell into hero's

life. Not good simile, bombshell. Query, hero. Would she fall in love

with man of B. N.'s type? I see another type more probable, but don't

want that.

"August 4th. Fearful row. General upset. Don't see any book unless I

write it alone. Aline says I can save situation for her. Would like only

too well do what she wants, but difficult bring it off as things are.

Chances in favour of other man. Temptation consent be cat's-paw. Is that

fair to the lovely chestnut in the fire? Extra-ordinary that child like

this can so upset us all. What is the electric attraction we can't

resist? More than normal amount of radium, perhaps!"

"Well, why don't you laugh at the rattle of the dry bones?" asked Basil,

as I read on, more and more puzzled.

"I haven't come to many funny things yet," said I, "except about Job.

That was rather good, though I don't see how you weave such things into

your books."

"Job--Job?" he repeated vaguely. Then a rush of blood went over his

whole face, up to his forehead. His dreamy dark eyes looked suddenly

anything but dreamy. "Good Heavens!" he gasped. "What have you got

there?" and began to ransack all the pockets of his waistcoat and coat

until he found the twin of the book he'd given me. "This is what I meant

you to see," he said in a queer, ashamed voice.

I handed the first book back to him. He seized it and glanced from page

to page, looking almost ill. By and by he came to something which seemed

to scare him. As far as I could tell, it was farther toward the end than

I had read.

"Would you mind showing me where you left off," he asked.

"It was where you were wondering whether your new heroine had swallowed

radium or something," said I.

"Oh!" He looked relieved. "Well--I wouldn't have had you see that

idiotic stuff for a good deal. But I told you, didn't I, that if the

book went on I'd have to put you into it? There's a lot of silly rot

there. Poetical license!"

"The thing that made the most impression on me was the part about the

red hair," I said. "The description sounded so nice. Who was Circe,

please? Was she Scottish? It's a name a Pictish princess might have

had."

"The first Circe lived even before the Pictish princesses," Basil

answered, quieting down, though he was still very flushed. "But she's

had a good many descendants--one or two at least in each generation of

women born in every country. Not that you--I mean the new heroine--will

be one of them really."

"What did Circe do?" I hurried on.

"Do? She was an exceptionally attractive woman. She had a special kind

of magnetism that nobody could resist. She amused herself by turning all

the men she knew--there were quite a lot of them--into animals of

different sorts."

"I think it would have been cleverer and more attractive of her if she

had turned animals into men," said I.

"That's what _my_ heroine can do," Basil explained. "She's a kind of

miniature baby Circe, for her red hair and general get up, and her

curious power of upsetting people and their plans from the first minute

they see her. But--my heroine wouldn't and couldn't turn her victims

into beasts. She makes them want to transform themselves into something

very extra special in the way of manliness."

"Why do you call her _your_ heroine with an emphasis?" I wanted to know.

"Isn't she your sister's heroine, too?"

"No. My sister doesn't see her as a heroine for a novel. And that's why

I say the book we started out to write won't materialize. No author can

write a story he or she doesn't take a strong interest in."

"That's where my writing is easier," I said. "I just put down all the

things exactly as they happen, and as I see and think about them. So

there's no heroine--and no hero--and no story."

"Yes, that is simpler," he agreed. "That's the way the Great Author

writes His book. Only all His characters are heroes and heroines in the

stories of their own lives."

As we talked, the moon went down in the west. The sky was a pale lilac,

like a great concave mirror reflecting the heather. Then it darkened to

a deeper purple, and made my thoughts feel like pansies, as they

blossomed in my mind. We fell into silence. But Mrs. James said

afterward that was because we were hungry and didn't realize what was

the matter with us. Perhaps she was right, but it didn't seem so prosaic

at the time.

As the car brought us near the town of Ayr (which, with its lights

coming out, reddened the purple mirror) it was too dark to see details

clearly. But, driving slowly, we were aware of a thing that loomed out

of the quiet landscape and seemed strangely foreign to it, as if we were

motoring in Greece or Italy, not Scotland. It was a great classic

temple, rising on the banks of a stream that laughed and called to us

through the twilight.

"Can it be somebody's tomb?" I asked. But there was no cemetery, only a

garden, and close by a camel-backed bridge that crossed the surging

river.

"It must be the Burns monument," said Basil. "I've never been here, but

I've studied up the place and looked at maps till I can see them with my

eyes shut. This is the right place for the monument, with a museum, and

some garden statues of Tam o'Shanter and Souter Johnnie, which we'll

have to visit by daylight to-morrow. I hope you're going to invite me to

sight-see with you?"

"It's not for me to invite any one."

"Look as if you want to, and it's done."

"Oh, I'll do that!" I promised.

VIII

We stopped at a big railway-hotel when we came into Ayr. Basil and Mrs.

West took rooms there too, because it was the best in town, and Mrs.

West always wants the very best--except when she's depressed by bad

notices of her books!

It was late, and she was so faint with hunger that she begged us not to

dress, but to go to dinner in ten minutes. We agreed; but when we'd

hurriedly washed our hands and faces and assembled at the rendezvous,

there was no Mrs. West. Basil was the only one who didn't look

surprised. Ten more minutes passed, perhaps, giving us time to think how

hungry we were too, and then the lady appeared. She hadn't exactly

dressed, but she had done something to herself which made her look fresh

and lovely and elaborate, in contrast to Mrs. James and me.

"Dear people!" she exclaimed, "I'm so sorry if I've kept you waiting,

but I simply couldn't find a _thing_; and the more haste, the less

speed, you know. Mr. Somerled, you've been here before in your

pre-American days. Do, like an angel-man, show me the way to the

dining-room. I can never get used to going in late, with a lot of people

staring. Basil will take care of Barrie and Mrs. James."

I felt as if I should go mad and bite something if she were to cultivate

the habit of calling me "Barrie"; but as I'd invited both her brother

and Sir S. to do so, and Mrs. James had never called me anything else, I

couldn't very well make Mrs. West the one exception.

A good many of the hotel guests had finished dinner by that time, but

twenty or thirty were still at their tables in the big dining-room,

which seemed to me absolutely palatial after my "glass retort."

Evidently we were well in the thick of "tourist zone" again, judging by

the look of the people, for most of them had the air of having travelled

half round the world in powerful and luxurious motor-cars. You could see

they weren't "local"--with four exceptions, our nearest neighbours. I

thought they were pets; but Mrs. West stared in that pale-eyed way I

noticed women have when they wish to express superiority or contempt.

All four of the pets were old--two very old, two elderly. The first pair

wore bonnets which they must have had for years, things that perched

irrelevantly on the tops of their heads, and looked entirely extraneous.

The second two had something more or less of the hat tribe, and Sir S.

said this was because their elders considered them girls, and granted

them the right to be frivolous in order to attract the opposite sex.

Mrs. West was sure that such headgear couldn't be got for love or money

except in small remote Scottish towns. "Might come from Thrums," said

Sir S. I'd never heard of Thrums, and Basil explained that it was a

famous place in a novel, written by a man of my name, Barrie. "The real

place is Kerrimuir," he went on, and promised to give me the book.

At this Sir S. glanced our way for an instant, looked as if he

wanted to speak, changed his mind, and turned again to Mrs. West, next

whom he sat, with Mrs. James on his other side. No wonder, I thought,

he liked better to look at her than me, as she was so fresh and

elaborate and charming. All through dinner he talked to Mrs. West

and a little to Mrs. James, leaving Basil to entertain me, which he

did very kindly. Still, Sir S. seemed annoyed because a party of

young American men at a table near ours stared at me a good deal,

though he didn't care to pay me any attention himself. He drew his

eyebrows together and glared at them once, whereupon the nicest

looking of the four (and they were all good-looking) bowed. Sir S.

returned the nod stiffly, with an "I-wonder-if-I-really-_do_

know-you,-or-if-this-is-a-trick-to-claim-acquaintance?" sort of

expression.

Perhaps I ought to have been annoyed too, but I wasn't a bit. They were

_such_ nice boys, so young, and having such a glorious time! I was glad

they looked at me and not at Mrs. West, and I was sure they didn't mean

to be rude. Probably they'd seen mother, or her photographs, and were

puzzling over the resemblance which Sir S. and Basil both say is very

strong, in spite of "marked differences." Whenever we speak of her, I

feel as if I could hardly wait till Monday, though at other times the

present seems so enchanting I can't bear to have it turn into the past.

The American boys (I thought that none of them could be over twenty-one)

lingered at their table a long time after they seemed to have finished

their dinner. They played some kind of game with bent matches which made

them laugh a good deal; but the minute we got up, I heard them push back

their chairs, though I didn't turn my head.

Basil and I walked out of the dining-room after the rest of the party,

and the boys came close behind us. I heard one say in a low voice, "Did

you ever see such hair?" and I felt a sort of creep run all the way down

my plait and up again into my brain, because I've been brought up to

think red hair ugly, and it's hard to believe every one isn't making fun

of it. However, I remembered what Sir S. said about the flame-coloured

heads of the children in the road, and that stuff Basil wrote in his

notebook about Circe. Then I felt better, and hoped that the boys were

not laughing.

Outside the dining-room door the handsomest one got near enough to speak

to Sir S. "How do you do, Mr. Somerled?" he said. "Don't you remember

me? I'm Jack Morrison, Marguerite's cousin. I met you twice at Newport

while you were painting her portrait."

"Marguerite Morrison. 'M. M.,' the grateful model who gave him the

refrigerator basket!" thought I. And Sir S. proceeded to give the cousin

a refrigerator glance; but it didn't discourage him. He went on as

cordially as ever. "My three chums want to be presented: Dick Farquhar,

Charlie Grant, Sam Menzies. We're all Harvard men, seeing Europe in

general and Scotland in particular, in our vacation. We've every one of

us got Scottish blood in our veins, so we sort of feel we've earned the

right to make your acquaintance. And we've been wondering if you'd

introduce us to your friends, if you don't think it's cheek of us to

ask!"

Sir S. looked as if he did think it great "cheek"; but if he hesitated,

Mrs. West quickly decided for him. She gave the nice American boy one of

her sweet, soft smiles, and said, "Of course Mr. Somerled will introduce

you all to us; or you may consider yourselves introduced, and save him

the trouble. My name is Aline West, and this is my brother, Basil

Norman."

She went through this little ceremony in a charming way, yet as if she

expected the young men to be delighted; and I too thought they would

burst into exclamations of joy at meeting celebrities. But not a word

did any of the four say about the books, or their great luck in meeting

the authors. Perhaps they were too shy, though they didn't seem shy in

other ways. They just mumbled in a kind of chorus. "Very pleased to know

you both" (which Mr. Norman told me afterward is an American formula, on

being introduced); and when they'd bowed to the brother and sister and

Mrs. James (though she hadn't been mentioned) all four grouped round me.

This was natural, I suppose, because we were more or less of an age.

"Is this your daughter, Mrs. West?" asked Jack Morrison. "And may we

children talk to her?"

For a minute that pretty, sweet-faced woman looked exactly like a cat.

She did, really. It almost gave me a shock! I thought, "She must have

_been_ a cat in another state of existence, and hasn't quite got over

it." Not that cats aren't nice in their way; but when ladies in

fascinating frocks, with hair beautifully dressed, suddenly develop a

striking family likeness to Persian pussies robbed of milk, it does have

a quaint effect on the nerves.

"Miss MacDonald is _not_ my daughter," said Mrs. West, laughing wildly.

"I'm not _quite_ old enough yet to have a daughter of her age, and she's

not such a child as she looks. But _do_ talk to her, by all means. I'm

sure she'll be very pleased."

"Then your name _is_ MacDonald?" Jack Morrison exclaimed. "We were

saying at dinner how much you look like Mrs. Bal MacDonald, the

beautiful actress. Is she any relation?"

"Yes, she is," I answered. And I would have gone on to tell him and his

friends that she was my mother, but I saw Sir S. and Mrs. West and Basil

looking as if they wanted to get away, so I dared not go into

particulars.

"Do tell us about it," said all the American boys together, when I

paused to take breath and think. I should have loved to stop and talk

about mother, but magnetic thrills of disapproval from my guardians

crackled through me. "If you're in Edinburgh next week maybe you'll find

out," I said consolingly. "But now I must go."

I bowed nicely, and they bowed still more nicely, trying to look

wistful, as if they didn't want me to hurry away.

We went to a private sitting-room Sir S. had taken, so I suppose he had

invited Basil and Mrs. West; and I thought they would speak of the

American boys, but nobody even referred to their existence. This made me

feel somehow as if I were being snubbed. I don't know why, for nobody

was unkind.

Afterward, when Mrs. James and I went to our adjoining bedrooms, I asked

her if I had done anything I ought not to have done.

"No, my dear child," said she, smoothing my hair, which I'd begun to

unplait. "Nothing except----" and she hesitated.

"Except what? Tell me the worst."

"There isn't any worst. You did nothing that Mrs. West and I wouldn't

like to do, if we could. I won't go into particulars, if you don't mind,

because it wouldn't be good for you if I did, and might make you

self-conscious--a great misfortune that would spoil what some of us like

best in you. But you needn't worry."

"Mrs. West looked as if she longed to scratch my eyes out. She needn't

have been so _very_ vexed at my being taken for her daughter. I'm not a

scarecrow, or a village idiot."

Mrs. James laughed, a well-trained little laugh she has, which seems

taught to go on so far and no farther--like the tune I once heard a

bullfinch sing in a shop.

"My dear, you're too young and unworldly to understand these things,"

she said. "A pretty woman, a celebrity like Mrs. West, isn't pleased

when she expects all the attention of young gentlemen for herself, to

find that she goes for nothing, and all they want is to talk to some one

else. And then, at her age, to be taken for a grown-up girl's mother! I

couldn't help being sorry for her myself. I know what it is to want to

keep young."

"But you're thinking of Doctor James," said I. "And she's a _widow_.

Besides, she's always calling me a child, and telling me to play dolls."

"Well, that isn't to say that she wants all the men there are to play

dolls with you," chuckled Mrs. James.

"These were boys, compared to her. She must be _thirty_."

"Maybe she's more, if the truth were known. But why should it be known?

Even when we're thirty and--er--a little over--we like to be admired by

boys as well as others. It makes us feel we haven't got _beyond_ things.

Still, she needn't grudge you those lads. She's got the great Somerled."

"Yes, I suppose she has," I admitted grudgingly.

I went to bed feeling as if elephants had walked over me for years.

* * * * *

Next morning Sir S. seemed to take it for granted that Basil would look

after Mrs. James and me. He certainly put on rather a "kind uncle" air

with me, but the more he did so, the less and less I felt as if he were

my uncle, and the more and more I wanted to have him for my knight--mine

all alone, without so much as a link of his chain armour for any one

else.

It is strange, as I've thought often before already, how one can get to

feel in such a way about a person one has known only a few days. But you

see, _I've known Sir S. in a motor-car_. I do believe that makes a

difference. Motor-cars vibrate, and you vibrate in them faster than you

do when not in motor-cars; so your feelings travel much faster than they

would in any other way. _That_ must be the scientific explanation of

what I feel for Sir S.

Here we were in Ayr, whither we'd come to think about Burns and nobody

else (unless, perhaps, Wallace) and this was to be the beginning of a

special little tour, following all along the line of Burns's pathway in

life, from his birth in the town of Ayr, to his death in the town of

Dumfries. We'd hurried through Dumfries almost with our eyes shut, on

purpose not to see where he died, before he was born, so to speak; and I

had thought all this inspiration on the part of Sir S. I fancied that he

had planned it partly for my sake, because of my being just out of the

glass retort. But now he abandoned me to another; and seeing him

entirely absorbed in Mrs. West kept me from dwelling on Burns as much as

I ought. If you are to concentrate your mind on historical characters or

poets, you must clear your brain out to make room for them, whereas mine

was stuffed full of fancies about myself and other people, none of whom

are historical at all yet--except, perhaps, the great Somerled.

Neither could Basil think exclusively of Burns, as we walked together

through the pleasant town of Ayr, after our early breakfast. He was

absent-minded once or twice, and when I said, "A penny for your

thoughts!" he answered that they were of the book he would like to write

but couldn't.

"The men I want to write about are boiling with primitive passions,"

said he, laughing, "and that won't do for a 'motor-novel.' Not that

people who travel in motor-cars aren't mostly boiling with primitive

passions for one cause or another, every minute. But the critics won't

have it. According to them, characters can experience grand emotions

only when they are keeping still, not when they're being hurled about

the country. The proper place for primitive emotions is in small fishing

villages, or, better still, on Devonshire moors, or, best of all, in the

illimitable desert. So you see the men I have in my mind wouldn't go

down with the critics, because unfortunately they happen to be in a

motor-car."

Talking of men in motor-cars, at that moment an enormous red car, going

very fast, changed its mind suddenly, stopped short in twice its own

length, and out jumped four men. They were the Americans of last night,

and by this time I had mixed up their names (except Jack Morrison's,

because he was so good-looking, with square blue eyes), but they

labelled themselves over again very neatly for me. The freckled one was

Dick Farquhar; the one with a moustache like the shadow of a coming

event, Charlie Grant; the one with the scar on his forehead, Sam

Menzies; but they had funny nicknames for each other. Afterward Basil

said they made him feel as if his name ought to be Methuselah.

The boys had been going to Burns's birthplace in their motor-car, but

they asked if they might walk round the town with us, and take to their

auto later. I looked appealingly at Basil, for they were such fun, so he

said, "Yes, of course"; and they were very polite, and called him "sir,"

as they had Mr. Somerled the night before. But each time they used the

word, Basil looked as if he were swallowing bad medicine, and yet as

though he were inclined to laugh. Presently, however, he went ahead with

Mrs. James, following his sister and Sir S., and left me to the four

boys. We laughed at everything. I'm afraid it wasn't at all the spirit

to go hero-worshipping; and none of them knew anything about "The Twa

Brigs" of Burns's poem. I should have liked to call Basil and ask him,

but they said they should feel it would be money in their pockets never

to have been born if I "shunted" them like that, so we laughed a great

deal more and went on wallowing in ignorance. They seemed to take it for

granted that I would rather be with them than with the others, and they

paid me all sorts of funny compliments. They vowed that they had

resolved to change their whole trip because of me, and wherever I was

going they would go too; so, just for fun, I would tell them nothing

except that it was to be Edinburgh on Monday. Cross-question as they

might, I would say no more than that they must find out my hotel, and

how I was related to "Mrs. Bal" (as they all called her) for themselves,

if they were to find out at all.

They knew little more about Wallace than Burns. When we stopped in front

of the monument in the High Street, coming back from the Auld Brig, Jack

Morrison began grandly with "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," but he

could get no farther, and stopped to ask helplessly, "Where _did_ he

bleed, anyhow? Was it here, and if not, why did they put up the

monument?"

Even I knew that Wallace was born in Ayr; and when I impudently inquired

what they came to Europe to see, if they cared more about football than

history, they all answered that they came to see pretty girls. "And, by

Jove, we're doing it!" added Charlie Grant.

"Can't you find pretty girls at home?" I sneered.

"We have found 'em. We're looking for new types now," said Jack. "So's

the great Somerled, isn't he? He told my Cousin Marguerite that he was

going a long journey in search of a model with the right shade of hair,

which was hard on her, poor girl, as she's spent a pot o' money on hers.

But Somerled's a sardonic sort of chap, don't you think? They say his

money's spoilt him. He hardly ever paints nowadays. Too busy grubbing

for millions. I've heard that you have to go on your knees to get him to

do a portrait--and if he graciously consents, you can't tell but he'll

bring out all that's most evil in your soul on to your face, like a

rash. You never know what'll happen with him--except his fee. Nothing

less than ten thousand dollars, if you get off cheap."

"I don't think he's that kind of a man at _all_," said I, "Why, just to

prove to you that he isn't, he's offered to paint me for nothing!"

They all roared at this, and wouldn't explain why. I didn't like them

much, for five minutes; but after that I couldn't help forgiving them

again.

We took the Gray Dragon for Alloway and for Burns's birthplace, but the

boys jumped into their car and kept close behind us. Hardly had we got

into the tiny thatched house--once a mere "clay biggin"--where Burns was

born, than the four appeared on the scene. Mrs. West was scarcely civil

to them at first, until Basil whispered (only in fun, of course, but she

took it seriously, as she often does when people think they're being

humorous), "If you're nasty to those boys, it will be a bad

advertisement. They won't read your books or tell their friends they're

the best books going!" She was quite kind and elderly-sisterly to them

after that. But nice boys as they are, it did grate on me having them

make jokes every minute, even about that wonderful, pathetic little room

with the railed-off furniture and curtained wall-bed.

Luckily I had been reading about the cottage and everything else

concerning the Burns family while I dressed. I knew already how Burns's

father built the tiny house with his own hands; how the night that

Robert was born, a fearful storm came up which threatened to sweep away

the whole biggin; and how the poor young mother had to be hustled off to

a neighbour's cottage. How little the poor couple guessed that the baby

born "in thunder, lightning and in rain" would make of the clay biggin a

world's shrine, to be bought by the nation for four thousand pounds.

Maybe it cost five pounds to build. How I did want to believe that from

one of the bowls kept on a shelf in that room of the wall-bed Burns had

eaten his porridge as a child. Of course that would be almost too good

to be true; but he did eat his porridge in that room, anyhow--and often

wanted more than he could get. What brains of genius have been nourished

on porridge and oaten cake in this country of ours! I felt more than

ever proud of my Scottish blood as I stood in that low-ceilinged

cottage; and I wondered if Sir S. had the same glorious thrill. I didn't

know if he had ever before come to Ayr; but I did know that his first

home on our own island of Dhrum must have been much like this--just a

clay biggin with a but and a ben. He, too, was born a genius. He, like

Burns, knew grinding poverty. He, too, was taken up by great ones and

dropped again, for he has told me so.

Once Sir S. was near me for a minute--without his Aline--and I did want

some word to prove that I was still his princess, he my knight. But all

I got from him on the subject was: "Well, do you think the knights

'notice' that you're a princess?"

I stared, bewildered. Then I remembered our conversation in the car,

before Mrs. West came and annexed the front seat. Of course I knew he

meant the American boys.

"They notice that I'm like my mother," said I.

"Oh, is that all?" And he laughed. Then Mrs. West flitted over to ask if

we oughtn't to go to the museum.

It is a pathetic little museum, with intimate relics and countless

pictures of Burns, each one making him look entirely different from all

the others. By and by we went on to the monument, the strange classic

temple that had loomed out of the twilight as we came to Ayr. The road

from town to the monument was the way of Tam o' Shanter's wild ride, or

almost the same; only there's a tram-line now to spoil the romance, if

one chooses to let it be spoiled. As for me, I'd scorn to let romance be

broken by an object so dull as a tram-car. When things are ugly I simply

make them transparent for my eyes, and see through them as if they

didn't exist.

I had to do a good deal of this juggling in the neighbourhood of the

monument; for the booths bristling with Burns souvenirs, and the tea

gardens where crowds drink to Burns's memory in ginger pop and fizzy

lemonade, would be rather dreadful if they were not funny. I'm sure,

though, Burns's sense of humour would make him laugh a mellow, ringing

laugh: if he could see those thousands of bottles of temperance drinks

being emptied in his honour.

It was good to escape from the gay, meretricious gardens to the

graveyard of Alloway Auld Kirk, where Tam o' Shanter's witches danced,

and where Burns's father lies buried. There was peace, too, where the

Brig o' Doon arched its camel-back over a clear brown, rippling stream.

There, through the singing of the water, through the playing of an old

blind fiddler scraping the tune of "Annie Laurie," I could hear the true

Burns song, the music of his thoughts sweetly ringing on, to keep the

world young, as the bright water leaps on forever to give its jewels to

the sea.

We went back from Alloway to Ayr, and lunched early in our own hotel.

The boys lunched early too, and when we started out on the next stage of

our Burns pilgrimage, we saw their red car panting in front of the

hotel. I had heard no talk of new plans for Basil and Mrs. West, but

they must have talked things over with each other or Sir S., for

Blunderbore was vibrating healthily between the Gray Dragon and the Red

Prince. I could have jumped for joy when I saw Blunderbore, and kissed

him on his bonnet. Already in imagination I was in my old place on the

front seat of our car, beside my knight; but the first words of Sir S.

snatched me off again and left me dangling in mid-air.

"Sure your motor's all right again?" he inquired of Basil.

I held my breath for the answer.

"Yes, thanks, quite all right."

"You know"--and Sir S. turned to Mrs. West--"we're delighted to keep you

as our guests."

"You _are_ good," she answered, "but--we mustn't wear out our welcome."

"Don't be afraid of that." (I did so wish I could have been sure whether

his tone was eager or only cordial! Probably Mrs. West was wishing the

same.)

"Thanks a thousand times, but we'll sample our own car for a while. We

shall meet and exchange impressions. And perhaps--after Edinburgh----"

She broke off, leaving the rest to our imagination. Mine was so lively

that it gave my heart a pinch. I could see what she meant as clearly as

if she had held a photograph before my eyes: me, with mother, waving

good-byes from a hotel door; she and her brother transferred permanently

to the Gray Dragon, the Row forgotten; Blunderbore's nose turned meekly

back toward Carlisle; Mrs. James out of the picture. Just for an instant

I could have cried. Then I reminded myself for the twentieth time that

in a few days _nothing_ can matter, because I shall have my own dear,

beautiful mother, who will make up to me for everybody and everything

else.

I don't know how I should have borne it if Mrs. James had wanted to sit

in front, but the angel didn't. And presently there was I in my old

place, feeling as if weeks instead of hours had elapsed (yes "elapsed"

is the most distance-expressing word) since I last sat shoulder to

shoulder with Sir S.

That feeling of long-ago-ness made me a little shy, and to save my life

I couldn't think of a word to say except about the weather; so I said

nothing at all, and he said the same. By and by I began to count. When I

had got up to five hundred, and still he hadn't spoken, I knew I should

certainly burst if nothing happened before a thousand.

"Well?" he murmured at last in an isolated way.

"Five hundred and eighty-six," I counted aloud inadvertently.

"Eh?" said he.

"I was just seeing how many I should have to count before you spoke."

"H'm! I'm afraid you do find me a dull companion after all your latest

acquisitions. But what can I do? In a way I'm your guardian temporarily.

I can't let you run about the country alone with hordes of young men. I

may seem selfish; but I have done my best for you since other and

younger knights came upon the field."

"That _is_ hypocritical!" I flung at him. "You shed me on others because

you like the society of a grown-up woman better than mine; and then you

pretend you're doing it for my sake. I _like_ that!"

"I thought you would like it. That's why I did it."

"Not because you wanted to talk to Mrs. West?"

"Oh, of course I like talking to her. Don't you like talking to her

brother, and all that drove of boys?"

"Why--yes, I like talking to them well enough, but----"

"But what?"

"You ought to _know_, without telling."

"I don't know. Are we playing at cross purposes?"

"How can I tell, if you can't?"

"How can I, if you _won't_?"

"Oh, don't let's argue about nothing! Let's be happy--perfectly happy."

"In other words, if milk has been spilt, don't water it with salt tears,

but leave it to collect cream."

"Yes. Why doesn't everybody treat spilt milk like that?"

"It doesn't occur to poor worried humanity. It wouldn't occur to me in

other society--Princess."

"Thank you, Sir Knight." I couldn't resist nestling my shoulder closer

to his in joy and gratitude: and then an odd thing happened. A tiny

shock of electricity seemed to flash through his shoulder to mine. I

never felt anything like it before. It made my heart stop and afterward

beat fast. I had to talk of something irrelevant in a hurry, so I

grabbed at Burns: and indeed we ought not even for a minute to have

talked of any other subject on this road, which we were exploring only

because of Burns. Not that the high road between Kilmarnock and Dumfries

wouldn't be worth seeing if Burns had never set foot on it, and if no

other great ones had passed that way. It would be worth travelling for

itself alone, for every mile has its own special beauty. And the more I

think of Scotland the more I tell myself she is like a wise connoisseur

(I hope that's the word!) who goes ahead of others to a sale of splendid

pictures, and secures the finest for herself at a bargain. Several of

the prettiest pictures hang on the blue-and-gold walls of the Burns

country.

We came suddenly into view of Arran when the car had spun us along an up

and down road to Ochiltree and Cumnock. It was I who, looking back,

first caught sight of the jagged pinnacles boldly painted in purple on a

far, pale sky. I didn't know what they were, but Sir S. put on the

brakes quickly, and let us stop to look. He remembered the cliffs, and

gazed at them with a light in his eyes which would have told me, if I

hadn't known before, that he had been homesick for Scotland all these

rich, successful years, whether consciously or not.

By and by we came to the Nith, which afterward we did not leave; and

through a green glen wound the "sweet Afton" Burns wrote of and loved

almost as dearly as he loved its elder brother. Here in this valley,

companioned with his own starry thoughts, he walked and rode, happy in

his fellowship with Nature, even though poverty made him an exciseman at

fifty pounds a year. He had to put down smuggling with one hand and

write his glorious poetry with the other, as Mrs. James expressed it. At

New Cumnock he would spend a night sometimes on his way to Ellisland,

his "farm that would not pay," near Dumfries.

Always following in the track of Burns, the Gray Dragon dashed up and

down short, steep, switchbacked hills (which must have tried any steed

of ancient days except a witch's broomstick) and whisked us into

Sanquhar, the "sean cathair" or "old fortress" of earliest Gaelic times,

now snappily called "Sanker." There Queen Mary rested, going to

Dundrennan after the terrible battle of Langside; there Prince Charlie

marched; and there was a monument of granite to the Covenanters Cameron

and Renwick. Burns must have dreamed of Queen Mary when duty brought him

to Sanquhar; and Renwick would have been a person to appeal to him,

because of his youth and good looks, and because the "pretty lad" was

the last martyr to the Covenant. But perhaps he thought most of all of

that Admirable Crichton who was born at Sanquhar, not in the castle of

his wild and brilliant family, but at Eliock House. Burns would maybe

have liked him not so much for taking his degree at St. Andrews when he

was twelve, or for knowing ten languages and many sciences, as for

wandering adventurously over the world, winning tilting matches at the

Louvre, and the love of ladies at Padua and Venice.

Mrs. James had bought a book with quotations from a diary of Burns, and

she read out to us while the car stopped at Sanquhar what he had written

about one specimen day:

"Left Thornhill at five in the morning. Rode four miles to Enterkinfoot

and made a call: thence three miles to Slunkerford with another call:

thence six miles to Sanquhar, where there were twenty official visits to

be made: thence two miles to Whitehall, with two more calls: and a

return journey to Sanquhar, finishing the day's work at seven in the

evening."

Poor poet. But he had always his glowing fancies to keep his heart warm.

We felt almost guilty because we had no horrid calls to make, as he had;

nothing to do but enjoy the scene made magical by his love of it: the

valley with its near green hills and distant peaks of Galloway and

Lowther; the river girdling wooded reaches with a belt of silver, or

burrowing through deep rocky channels, purple as heather petrified. It

was all as different from yesterday's Crockettland as if we had crossed

the ocean from one to the other.

At Carronbridge we saw the woods of Drumlanrig on our right hand; and

Sir S. told me about the Duke of Queensberry who spent all his money in

building the splendid castle, slept in it one night, saw the bills for

it, cursed himself and it, and went away with nothing left but a broken

heart. "Deil pyk out the een of him who sees this," he wrote on the back

of the biggest bill.

There's a Burns museum at lime-tree-shaded Thornhill, but I refused to

go in and stare at an original cast of his skull. I do think a man,

especially a great genius, ought to be allowed the privacy of his own

skull!

Closeburn is the place where the Kirkpatricks, the Empress Eugénie's

family, used to live before they went to Spain. At Auldgirth we went

over a bridge built by Carlyle's father. At Mauchline Burns grew from a

boy into a man and fell in love. At Ellisland, Burns lived for a long

time with his handsome wife, Jean Armour. At Dalswinton the first

steamboat made its first trip, and Burns was on it. All round us now was

Scott's "Red-gauntlet" country; and the bridge crossing the Nith at

Dumfries was built by Devorgilla. There was something to see and think

of every minute; and in fifty-nine miles we had followed Burns's whole

life-story on its slow way from Ayr to Dumfries. Only--we couldn't

follow his thoughts to the stars!

We had stopped many times; still it wasn't yet five o'clock, and we had

time to see all that's sacred to Burns at Dumfries, the "Fair Queen of

the South," as Sir S. called it, quoting I don't know what.

First we went to the house in Bank Street where Burns came when he left

Ellisland, and had seventy pounds a year to live on instead of fifty--a

sad and grim little house, where in the wee closet that was his study we

could hear the music of the Nith, but catch no sparkle of its water. He

had hardly air enough to fan the fire of genius, yet it went on turning

brightly because nothing could put it out. If it was a sad house to live

in, it must have been even sadder to die in. He'd have liked his last

look to be on sky and meadow, or he would not have said in his "Song of

Death":

"Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth and ye skies,

Now gay with the broad setting sun.

Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties!

Our race of existence is run."

I found those words in the Poems bound in tartan which Basil had bought

for me in a fascinating bookshop at Ayr and I read them in the room

where the poet died. Afterward I was glad to see in St. Michael's

churchyard a great many of the "loves and friendships" resting near him

in his long sleep. Their presence consoled me for the mausoleum which

nobody can admire nowadays, or think worthy of him. Almost, I would

rather have had him lie under one of those strange, enormous tombstones

like stone cupboards or tables which clutter the graveyard.

While we were trying to find the burial-place of Napoleon's doctor, and

some martyrs and cholera victims Mrs. James was interested in, Mrs. West

and Basil appeared, and then the Americans. Sir S. looked horribly

bored, when he saw the four tall, brown, nice-looking boys, and asked me

quite fiercely if I'd given them permission to follow us every step of

the way. I snapped back, "No, of course not!" And immediately he said,

"Forgive me. If you had, after all where would be the harm?"

There was no time for more. We had to say, "How do you do?" to Basil and

Aline; and then the boys surged round us, in their high spirits rather

like big Newfoundland puppies sacrilegiously racing each other among the

graves. They had been reading up history on purpose to please me, they

announced, and were ready to bet five pounds against a glove that they

knew more than I did. Was I aware that Dumfries meant "fort in the thorn

bushes?" Had I learned that the British Christian chief, who was the

real King Arthur, fought with pagan Saxons all along the Nith. Did I

know it was in Grayfriars, or the Minories Church, that Bruce killed the

Red Comyn, Devorgilla's grandson?

They won the glove; and then there was a scene when they took a penknife

and cut it up in four pieces, one for each man. I tried to keep them

from being so foolish, but might as well have tried to stop the wind

from blowing; and it was no wonder that Mrs. West turned her back on us

rather than see those dreadful boys ostentatiously stowing away the bits

of gray kid in what Jack Morrison called their "heart-pockets."

I was afraid Sir S. might think it was my fault, their coming to stay at

the pretty hotel he'd chosen for us because it overlooked the river; but

it wasn't a bit. It was just as much a coincidence as Mrs. West and

Basil finding three Canadian friends already there--perhaps even _more_

of a coincidence; for it didn't seem to me that Mrs. West was really

astonished at finding these people at a Dumfries hotel, or they at

finding her and Basil. I was there when they met in the hall: two rather

handsome dark men, brothers, named Vanneck, and the fair, thin little

wife of the younger one. All they said at first was, "Well, this _is_

nice! How do you do?" And it struck me afterward, when I thought it

over, that if it had been a great surprise, they would have mentioned

it. I wondered if they hadn't corresponded and arranged it somehow, for

they appeared to know each other very well, and to be the best of

friends, especially the elder Mr. Vanneck and Mrs. West, who called each

other "Aline" and "George." After dinner it turned out that she had been

inviting the Vannecks to go on to Melrose and Edinburgh in Old

Blunderbore, without consulting the chauffeur-owner of the car. He

thought the load, with extra luggage, too heavy for Blunderbore's

powers; consequently Mrs. West threw herself on the mercy of Sir S. She

asked if the Gray Dragon could take Basil, and the Gray Dragon's master

quietly said yes.

After Mrs. West had walked with Sir S. in the churchyard of St.

Michael's, he seemed very thoughtful and a little gloomy, even stiff in

his manner with me. At first I felt it must be that she had said

something to change him toward me, but again I told myself that that was

a silly and far-fetched suspicion. It was more likely that he

disapproved of my "larking" with the American boys and giving them a

glove to divide in bits. Afterward, too, when they turned up at our

hotel, he might easily have thought I'd encouraged them to follow us

again.

I hoped for a chance to put that idea out of his mind, but next morning,

starting for Melrose, Vedder had the place next Sir S., and Basil, Mrs.

James, and I were all three together behind.

We started before Aline West and her friends the Vannecks (her special

one is a widower, very rich, who has proposed several times, she told

Mrs. James); but the four boys waited for us to get off again, so they

might know where we were going; and I began to be almost angry, because

of the wrong impression their nonsense was making on Sir S. It had been

so good to get him back yesterday that it was worse than ever so see him

slipping quietly away once more.

If it hadn't been for these worries, it would have been a wonderful day.

From Dumfries we ran up and down nice scallopy hills, crossing the Annan

at a place named Beattock, for Moffat, where there are sulphur wells a

girl discovered two hundred years ago, and made the fortune of the town.

Then there was a lovely road along Moffat Water, with a succession of

wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we

were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom

he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie

brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the

Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he

wrote a Covenanter story, "Brownie of Bodesbeck," about a mountain we

could see hovering in the distance.

All Moffatdale looked a haunt for fairies, so no wonder it is cram full

of legends; and if I had been sitting with Sir S. I should have begged

him to stop and let us scramble up a rocky path to the haunt of a pale

spirit disguised as a waterfall. The Gray Mare's Tail is a disguising

name, too, for there is nothing gray about it, but all white as

streaming moonlight; and Sir S. and I together might have stood a good

chance of finding the rainbow key, sparkling on some cushion of

irridescent spray. We missed the chance, however; and who knows if it

will ever come again?

Basil had bought a volume of Scott's poems for me, to match the Burns's

and he found in "Marmion"--where he knew it existed--a verse about the

torrent:

Issuing forth one foamy wave,

And wheeling round the Giant's Grave,

White as a snowy charger's tail

Drives down the pass of Moffatdale.

So already we were coming into Scott's country. I remember Birkhill,

because it's the watershed between the Moffat and the Yarrow, and the

word "watershed" goes through my mind with a musical white rush, like a

cataract. It suggests beautiful faraway things. Besides, there's another

reason for remembering. Close by, at Dobbs Linn, the Covenanters used to

hide in the time of the great persecution.

We swept through some bare, bleak country before coming to the Yarrow,

but the rover brought us back to gentle, cultivated land, with thoughts

of her favourite Wordsworth for Mrs. James; and soon we came to a very

famous place, Tibbie Shiels's Inn. I had never heard of it, but that

doesn't take from its fame! Basil and Mrs. James could both tell me how

Scott, and Christopher North, and De Quincey, and a long list of other

great men, used to meet at the house kept by Mrs. Richardson, "Tibbie,"

who outlived all the noble company, and was buried at last in the same

churchyard with the Ettrick Shepherd.

By and by our road dropped down and down to the shores of lonely St.

Mary's Loch (Scott wrote of it in "Marmion"), and at the end of the

still lake to Dryhope Tower, where brave Mary Scott, his ancestress,

"The Flower of Yarrow," had her birthplace.

So we went on to Selkirk on its hill overlooking Ettrick Water, and

stopped just long enough to buy some of the celebrated "bannocks" for

our picnic luncheon later on, and to have a glance at the statues of Sir

Walter Scott and Mungo Park, the African traveller. Basil pretended to

be shocked because I had never heard of him! "And you had never heard of

Aline and me till you met us," he sighed, shaking his head. "I suppose

you never heard of the sutors of Selkirk, either? The burly sutors who

'firmly stood' at Flodden when other 'pow'rful clans gave way'? Well,

I'm glad, anyhow, that we aren't the _only_ people you'd never heard

of!"

Basil seemed very happy, and kind, and _understanding_, somehow, as if

he saw that something was not quite right with me, and he wanted to

console me as well as he could.

Sir S. had managed very clearly about not letting us stop to look at the

town of Burns's death until we'd seen the place of his birth and traced

out the path of his life-story; but he couldn't contrive the same kind

of trip for Sir Walter Scott's country without going over the whole road

twice. Besides, he wanted us to see Melrose by moonlight, and said it

would be "incomparably better than Sweetheart Abbey." But I knew it

wouldn't be better for me, and I didn't quite forgive him for thinking

it possible, now that we had got so mixed up with irrelevant people.

We had to go to Jedburgh first, the place farthest south; then to

Dryburgh; then flashing through Melrose to Abbotsford, where Scott died

as well as lived; and then back to Melrose for the night. That was his

plan; and I still supposed that we were to go on somewhere else next

day--Sunday--not arriving in Edinburgh till Monday. But it seems that

Sir S. had made up his mind to a different programme, though he said

nothing about it then.

Things happened to the boys' car on the way to Jedburgh, though the road

was good, and only undulating. Basil said that, as a matter of fact, he

had "ill-wished" them and their auto, and as "thoughts are things," he

had created the nail on which their tire came to grief. "Somerled and I

want to be the only ones," he added mysteriously. "We'll have no

interlopers." Which would have made me think him rather a frivolous

person, after all, if he hadn't been so well up in the lore of the road,

and known so many interesting things about Jedburgh, the county town of

Roxburghshire.

"If we curse a mere nail on a white velvet road-surface nowadays," said

he, "think what the roads must have been like when Jedburgh had a royal

castle, and kings and queens were travelling about from one of their

houses to another! Think what Queen Mary must have had to endure, even

bringing things down to modern times, comparatively. She stayed in

Jedburgh town, in an old house in Queen Street--came for assizes, I

think. Then, while she was there, bored to death, she heard that

Bothwell was 'sick of a wound' at Hermitage Castle, over twenty miles

distant. In an hour she was on her palfrey and off to see him, falling

into a morass on the way. But she got back again that night, rather than

her good subjects should say she neglected their affairs. She fell ill

with fever after her exertions. What wouldn't she have given for a

motor-car? But how she would have been bumped and bruised if she'd had

one, though the roads were grand then compared to the state they'd

fallen into after the Romans marched out of Scotland. Imagine the early

kings and queens with their processions passing where we pass now; and

armies returning from battle with their prisoners; and bands of pilgrims

going to some sacred shrine; and robber hordes moving at night; and

wild-beast shows on the way from one fair to another. Can't you see the

panorama?"

I could, easily, picture after picture. But when you come to think of

it, he'd mentioned nothing as curious as motors, which we take quietly

for granted, just as our forefathers took the wild beasts and the

robbers.

We had a glimpse of Burns's "Eden scenes on crystal Jed," though only

enough to be aggravating, for Basil said there were prehistoric caves,

and scenery enough to make a journey to Scotland worth while, if one

came for nothing else. But people in motor-cars never seem to turn aside

for anything. They go toward their destination like creatures possessed.

So, although Jedburgh is supposed to be the most historic town of the

Lowlands, we hardly looked at it in our haste to see the Abbey, and to

rush on to other Abbeys--a dayful of Abbeys! Not that Jedburgh put

itself out to attract us. It had rather a grim air as a town, as if it

hadn't quite forgotten the fierce slogan of the Jedburgh men, who

shouted "Jethart's here!" as they wielded the terrible Jethart axes

invented by themselves. And one isn't allowed to go inside Queen Mary's

house to see the tapestry her ladies worked.

I wished to think no abbey so beautiful as Sweetheart Abbey, which was

my first, and seen on the first night of the heather moon; but I had to

tell myself that Jedburgh was lovelier, in its garden on the river-bank.

Dreaming of its own reflection, its hollow, window-eyes could see, deep

down under a glass, all its own history and legends preserved forever as

in a crystal casket; the story of saintly King David who built it, and

of the French friars who left their own Abbey at Beauvais to people it;

better still, of the wedding with the spectre guest--the marriage of

little French Jolette to Alexander, the last of the Celtic kings.

Perhaps, too, the window-eyes peering into the crystal could see the

figure of Sir Walter Scott, seeking and finding inspiration in the

Abbey's old tales.

Basil, who told me the stories, read in a book that "Jedburgh is

completer than Kelso or Dryburgh, and simpler and more harmonious than

Melrose," so when the four boys appeared at last in Dryburgh Abbey,

having calmly missed out Jedburgh and Kelso to save time, I used the

criticism as if it were original, with great effect; for by that time

_we_ had made a side dash to see lovely Kelso, where Sir Walter went to

the Grammar School, and met Ballantyne, who long afterward published his

novels and brought about his bankruptcy. I heard also, read out from the

same book, that the stone of Dryburgh was taken from the quarry that

built Melrose, and that the name Dryburgh meant "Druid." Even the boys,

I think, could hardly help feeling the mysterious, haunting charm of the

place, which was as strange and secret as if the dark yew trees and

Lebanon cedars guarding the ruins were enchanted Druid priests. There

was a Druid urn, too, which looked as if it knew all the secrets of the

ages, and had held sacrificial blood.

I could imagine Sir Walter Scott coming to Dryburgh again and again, and

loving the hidden spot so well that he wanted to sleep his last sleep

there. Such a peaceful sleep it must be with the Tweed singing out of

sight, and yews old as legend to play lullabies upon their own

harp-strings when the wind touches their dark, rustling sleeves.

The song of the Tweed at Abbotsford was the song of Inspiration,

changing to the song of Fulfilment in the master's passing hour. Now, at

Dryburgh, the river veils itself like a mourner, and its song is the

Sleep Music which has in it the secret of death and of life beyond. I

stood for a minute alone in front of the tomb where Sir Walter's body

lies with those he loved best, in the place he loved best, and

transparent green shadows like the spirits of shadow hid me from the

sunlight. While I shut my eyes, I could understand the message of the

song. And I knew that if my knight had been with me it would have come

to him in the same way, because we are both of the land where the old,

old secrets of wind and waves and rock are in the blood of the people,

and sung by their bards. It is perhaps the mysterious kinship of far-off

ancestry which draws me to him, and tells me that we two belong

together--that others stand outside as strangers.

Just then I felt that it would have been worth the bother of being born

only for the sake of that minute, if I had no other minutes worth

living; and it seemed that some knowledge was coming back to me which

souls forget as bodies grow up to manhood or womanhood. But suddenly

Basil's voice broke the Music. "You look as if you were conjuring up the

White Lady of Avenel, who will come to any one who knows how to call

her, here at Dryburgh," he said. And I opened my eyes as if he had

jerked me back by the arm from the days of the Druids to the era of

motor-cars. And so he had--by the ear, not the arm. If Sir S. had spoken

to me then it would have been different. I begin to think he is going to

be the only Real Man in my world. But if I find that out, and he doesn't

think me the only Real Girl, what will become of me?

After we had done what Mrs. West, in her pretty little tinkling voice,

called "exhausting Dryburgh" (as if one could!) we went to Melrose, only

four miles away, to leave our luggage at a nice hotel and take rooms for

the night, before going on another mile and a half to Abbotsford. I

little thought what a surprise I should have by and by, owing to this

plan of action mapped out by Sir S.

The next thing that happened to us was seeing the many turreted house

built by the "Wizard of the North," when his wish was to found a great

Border family. He didn't realize then that he was founding a great

school of romance and that all the world would be his family in mind and

heart.

A book Basil had, said that the house was "ill-placed," but to me that

seemed a dull and unimaginative criticism. Nowadays people may think a

great deal about wide views from their windows; and if I ever build a

house with a fairy wand, that's what I shall choose to have myself. But

perhaps in Sir Walter's day the thing most sought for was a peaceful,

sheltered outlook all to yourself and your family, like a secret garden

of which only you had the key. Just such an outlook the Wizard had from

his windows; and of course what he most wished for was to bring the

singing Tweed into his secret garden, just as you coax a lovely wild

bird, if you can whistle its own notes, under the trees it loves.

Perhaps if Sir Walter had not been able to look out over his flowers and

hay-scented meadows to the friendly river, inspiration might have failed

him in his troubles. But, you see, he had that secret garden of his

soul; and when he was there it must have walled him into a region of

peace where worries could do no more than knock at the door.

Wandering over the big house with Mrs. James and Basil (the boys in the

background), I was glad, glad that Sir Walter had owned so many

treasures, and collected so many curiosities; yet I felt an undertone of

sadness even in the library (where the twenty thousand books are, given

back by those decent bodies, his creditors), a sadness like that which

must have pressed on his spirit, thinking of all the money he had paid

for his home, and the beautiful things in it--all the money he would

have to make out of his brain to clear away the debt. "When I do build

my house, I shall have a gallery like this in the library," I said,

thinking Basil was close behind me, as he had been; but instead, there

was Sir S. standing silently by. Basil had gone into the study, or

perhaps into the tiny "Speak a bit," to look at the wall-panelling taken

from Queen Mary's bed at Jedburgh.

"That's just what I was thinking about my library," Sir S. answered, as

if I had spoken to him.

"Haven't you got one yet?" I asked.

"Only an embryo library in a flat in New York--a rather nice flat. But a

flat isn't home. And you know--you ought to know--the house of my heart

is on a faraway island."

"The island of Dhrum?"

"Yes. I've just begun to realize that I never have had and never can

have a real home out of the Highlands. Would you think me an

interloper--you and the other grand MacDonalds--if I, the crofter's boy,

should develop an ambition like Sir Walter's--oh, not so worthy or

splendid, because _I'm_ neither worthy nor splendid--if I should wish to

have the great house of the MacDonalds of Dhrum, not let to me for a

term of years as it is now, but bought and paid for as my own?"

"Can the MacDonalds sell?"

"Yes, and will, if I'll pay his price. You see, he has no son, only a

daughter; and she, having failed to bring off a match or two----"

(I didn't let my eyes twinkle, or my face do that weird thing, "break

into a smile"; but Jack Morrison told me that Miss MacDonald had "set

her cap at the great Somerled," and torn it off and stamped on it in

rage because--this is Jack's slang--Sir S. "wasn't taking any.")

--"Having failed to bring off a match or two, has settled down into

old-maidhood. She's an enthusiastic suffragette, and hates living out of

London. The Mac of D. considers his club his castle, or a good deal

better; and as he's the last of the line--not a male heir, no matter how

distant--he can do as he likes with his ancestral stronghold. You know,

I suppose, your father was born at Dunelin Castle?'

"Yes," I said. "I wish I'd been born there, instead of at Hillard

House."

"So do I wish it. If you had been, I should have no hesitation

in--er--in building the gallery round the library wall."

"You think you really will decide to buy the castle?" I asked

breathlessly.

"Sometimes I think so. At other times I think, _Qui bono?_ I say to

myself that I shall never have a home, or an incentive for settling

down. But come along and look at Sir Walter's treasures before any one

else appears."

"Where's Mrs. West?" I asked involuntarily.

"She's annexed your bodyguard for the moment--do you mind?--appealed to

their innate love of horrors by showing them the picture of Queen Mary's

head, painted an hour after her death by a brother of Margaret Cawood,

her attendant. Suddenly I felt that, if Basil could spare you to me for

ten minutes, I should like to be the one to show you a few things--the

things I loved best when I came from Edinburgh to Abbotsford with a bit

of the first money I ever earned by my brush."

I turned on him, opening my eyes wide. "Basil spare me!" I echoed

scornfully. "I'm not his princess, even if you don't want me for yours."

"I do want you. But----"

"Oh, here he comes!" I whispered, shrill as a cricket. "Take me to see

_your_ things, quickly."

So we ran away from Basil, and I had one of the happiest hours I have

ever lived through; although the sight of Sir Walter's neat clothes in

the glass case--the thick-soled boots, the broad-brimmed hat that

covered his thoughts, the coat that covered his heart--brought tears to

my eyes.

Next best, I liked the bit of Queen Mary's dress, the pocket-book worked

by Flora MacDonald, Prince Charlie's "Quaich"--the cup with the glass

bottom to guard the drinker against surprises--the ivory miniatures Sir

Walter and his French bride exchanged, and the Rob Roy relics. Perhaps

it is odd, but they were the very things Sir S. had remembered most

affectionately. Last of all he showed me a toadstone amulet set in

silver, a charm to prevent and ward off the spells of fairies. "If I

could have had a thing like this to carry about with me in my

motor-car," he said, "I should perhaps have been safe. But it's too late

now."

He smiled at me with that whimsical yet kind smile which is the only

sort he ever gives me since Mrs. West and Basil and the boys came.

Before their day, there was a different look in his eyes. I can't tell

what that difference was, but I liked the old look a thousand times

better than the new, which makes me feel I may as well go into a

convent. Not that I intend to do so!

Just then Basil came to say that his sister and the Vannecks were going,

as Aline was tired; and would Sir S. tell her what time we were to see

the Abbey. Basil and I were left together--quite as usual, lately. He

made some rather nice poetical remarks about the house at Abbotsford:

how marvellously it expressed the personality and tendency of Sir

Walter's mind; and how it seemed to him that here was the true heart of

Scotland embalmed in spices and laid in a shrine, just as Robert Bruce's

heart lies at Melrose. I hardly listened, though, for I was wondering so

much what Sir S. would have gone on to say about the amulet if Basil had

let us alone a minute longer. But fairy fancies were in the air, in one

form or other. As we walked up the narrow path which would bring us to

the motor, Basil told me a dream he'd had the night before. "I thought,"

he said, "that I was a humble reincarnation of Thomas Ecildoune--Thomas

the Rhymer--and that I was walking in the Rhymer's Glen--it isn't far

out of this neighbourhood, you know--when a Vision in a magic motor-car

came sprinting down the steep curve of a rainbow. In front of my feet,

the Vision contrived to stop the car, or in another second it would have

run over me. Out she stepped and announced that she was the Queen of the

Fays, whom I would remember meeting before in my last incarnation, in

the same place. Strange to say, she looked exactly like you--and I must

add, she acted exactly as you do."

"Why, what was it she did?" I couldn't help wanting to know.

"She heartlessly vanished, just as I began to hope she might remain and

become my muse. You always vanish--and generally with another man."

We both laughed, and were laughing still when we came up with Mrs. James

and Mrs. Vanneck, Mrs. West and Sir S., who were ahead of us with the

others.

It had to be sunset and moonlight together for Melrose Abbey, for the

heather moon was still too young to be allowed by Mother Earth to sit up

late, all alone in the sky. This was not the "pale moonlight" Sir Walter

wrote of, and looked to for inspiration in his "Lay of the Last

Minstrel," but a light of silvered rose which seemed made for love and

joy. I thought, if an alchemist or magician should pour melted gold and

silver together in a rose-coloured glass, and hold it up to the sun, it

would give out a light like this. It might have been an elixir of life,

for it gave back the Abbey's youth, and more than its youthful beauty.

The bullet-shattered stone turned to blocks of pink and golden topaz,

and each carving stood out clear, rimmed with sapphire shadow, as we

wandered round the cruciform Gothic ruin, our feet noiseless on the

faded velvet of the grass. Even in the darkest shadow there lay a ruby

flush, like a glow of fire under a thick film of ash; but inside the

Abbey was a soft, gray gloom, as if evening hid in the ruins waiting its

time to come out. The Trinity window, the Calvary window, the window

with the Crown of Thorns, and the east window in the chancel, which Sir

Walter loved best, were all sketched against the sky in tracery of sepia

and burnt amber, as I heard Sir S. saying to Mrs. West. And though I

shouldn't have known what colours to use, because I'm not an artist, I

could see that the tall stone shafts were like slender-trunked trees

crowned with high clusters of branches, as in pictures of desert palms.

I wondered if the men who carved the stone had travelled in the East and

had seen palm trees rising from pale sand, black against a paler sky.

And I wondered, too, if queer knots and fantastic holes in the gray

trunks of oak had not put into men's minds the first idea of gargoyles.

Sir S. and Basil, who have been almost everywhere, agreed that they had

seldom seen such marvellous detail of carving, so many whimsically

planned and exquisitely carried out irregularities, or such lovely,

well-preserved sandstone. That quarry which gave the material for

Melrose and Dryburgh was a treasure-mine, and even the Romans knew and

valued it. I was quite glad to find those two-agreeing about something,

because ever since Basil joined us they have differed politely over

nearly every subject that came up.

We had been deeply occupied with Michael Scott's supposed grave, and the

story of the "dark magic" by which he divided into three, Eildon Hill,

in whose caverns Arthur and his warriors still sleep their enchanted

sleep; and so, when some strangers approached us, we didn't even look

up. A very intelligent custodian, who has written a book about the

Abbey, was showing us round at that moment, and telling things about Sir

Ralph Evers, whom the Douglases killed for revenge, on Ancrum Moor, and

all about the pillar with the "curly green capital." He had saved the

Douglas Heart for the last, as the crowning glory in the history of

Melrose; but when we'd done some sort of justice to everything else, he

marched us into the presbytery where the Heart is buried, and where,

according to his theory, it is commemorated in the carved stone tracery

of the window.

A man with his back to us turned as we appeared, and I interrupted the

custodian's learned discourse by crying out the name most sacred in the

Abbey. "Mr. Douglas!" I exclaimed; for it was he--the Douglas

soldier-man who was so kind, taking us all round the castle at Carlisle.

He said we might meet at Edinburgh, as he was soon to have leave, and

intended to visit relatives there, but it was a surprise coming on him

in the shrine of his ancestors.

I thought, of course, his arriving at that minute was an extraordinary

coincidence; but when Sir S. shook hands, and asked in a matter-of-fact

tone, "How is it we meet here?" he confessed, as if half ashamed, that

it wasn't exactly an accident. "You see, I often come to Melrose for a

look round if I'm in Scotland on leave," he said, "and I saw in the

paper yesterday that you were motoring in this neighbourhood, expecting

to call at Dryburgh and Melrose before Edinburgh."

"Ah, yes--that interview Aline gave a journalist acquaintance of mine at

Dumfries," I heard George Vanneck murmur to Basil, who looked rather

cross.

"I arrived at the hotel just after you'd been there to leave your

luggage and sign names in the visitors' book," Donald Douglas went on.

"They said you were motoring over to Abbotsford, and would come back to

see the Abbey later; so it occurred to me, if I strolled over about this

time, we might run across each other."

"Quite so," remarked Sir S.; an expression I detest, it sounds so like

filing iron, especially as he said it then. However, the soldier-man

didn't appear to mind in the least that the Great Somerled was stiff and

unsympathetic. He attached himself to me, as I was his only other real

acquaintance, except Mrs. James, in the party; and of course, as he

reminded me, we were very old friends--as old as the day we first saw

each other in the street at Carlisle, years and years ago.

He seemed to know as much as the custodian about Melrose and the Douglas

Heart--which was natural, as he so values everything connected with his

family name. He told me all about the good Sir James Douglas: how King

Robert Bruce when dying begged his friend to take his heart to the Holy

Land, and bury it where he had wished to go and fight for Christendom as

an expiation for killing the Red Comyn. It was as good as a chapter out

of a novel to hear how the Douglas got permission from the new king to

be gone seven years on his great adventure; how he heard on his way to

Jerusalem that King Alfonso of Spain was fighting the Saracens at

Granada, and couldn't resist offering his help, being sure that Robert

Bruce would have done the same; how in battle against Osmyn, the Saracen

king, he was hard pressed, and taking the casket with Brace's heart in

it from over his own heart, he threw it far ahead of him in the enemy's

ranks, shouting, "Pass first in fight, as thou wert ever wont. Douglas

will follow thee or die!" And how he did both follow and die, but

falling only when he had killed many Moslems and hewed his way through

their bodies to where the heart lay.

"That's the old story of the Douglas Heart," said the soldier-man, "and

there's a new story of the Douglas Heart I hope you'll let me tell you

some day before long, because it's even more interesting--to me."

"Why, then, I expect it will be to me too," said I politely, "so why not

tell it me now, in Melrose Abbey, the place of all places?"

He looked at me in an odd way, and said, "Yes, it _is_ the place of all

places; but I'm afraid it's a little too early in the day----"

Just then Basil came up to announce that Mrs. James had sent him to

fetch me, as we must return to the hotel and dress.

"Too bad!" I exclaimed. But as Sir S. was not far off I called to him,

"Don't you think we may come back here again after dinner?"

"Certainly, if you like," he answered. "Although the moon will have

gone."

"That doesn't matter," said I; "there will be stars. Mr. Douglas has a

_new_ story of the Douglas Heart to tell me, which he thinks is even

more interesting than the old, and it ought to be told in the Abbey."

When I explained this, Donald Douglas turned bright scarlet, and all

three of the Vannecks burst out laughing, which I thought extremely rude

and uncalled for. But Sir S. looked as solemn as a judge.

"No doubt he's right about it's being more interesting, and quite as

credible," said he.

I don't know whether Mr. Douglas would have asked Mrs. James and me to

walk over to the Abbey with him after dinner or not, if the weather had

kept fine, but a thunder shower came up and it poured. So, although I

teased him again to tell me the new story, when everybody but Mrs. James

and he and I were playing bridge in our private sitting-room, he

refused. "I'll wait till Edinburgh," he said, "if you'll let me see you

there."

I had to explain that I didn't know where I should stay in Edinburgh, as

that would depend upon my mother, to whom Mr. Somerled MacDonald was

taking me.

"And Somerled himself, and the others?" he asked.

"Oh, they're going on," said I, "leaving me behind."

He looked delighted; so perhaps he had not forgiven the Vannecks for

laughing.