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!

Caesar 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 Caesar 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 eclair 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."