r romantic namesake, "Flora Macdonald," with
Perthshire, it leaked out that our respective ancestors had commanded
battalions in Louis XIV.'s far-famed Scottish and Irish Brigades. That
discovery bridged gulfs. We were no longer payer and paid--we were
friends--friends for life.

A lump comes into my throat as I pen these words, for it is only a
short time since I heard of her death.

A week or so after I had settled in her home, I took, at her
suggestion, a rest (and, I quite agree with her, it was a very
necessary rest) from my writing, and spent the day on Loch Tay,
leaving again for "Donald Murray House" at seven o'clock in the
evening. It was a brilliant, moonlight night. Not a cloud in the sky,
and the landscape stood out almost as clearly as in the daytime. I
cycled, and after a hard but thoroughly enjoyable spell of pedalling,
eventually came to a standstill on the high road, a mile or two from
the first lights of Pitlochry. I halted, not through fatigue, for I
was almost as fresh as when I started, but because I was entranced
with the delightful atmosphere, and wanted to draw in a few really
deep draughts of it before turning into bed. My halting-place was on a
triangular plot of grass at the junction of four roads. I propped my
machine against a hedge, and stood with my back leaning against a
sign-post, and my face in the direction whence I had come. I remained
in this attitude for some minutes, probably ten, and was about to
remount my bicycle, when I suddenly became icy cold, and a frightful,
hideous terror seized and gripped me so hard, that the machine,
slipping from my palsied hands, fell to the ground with a crash. The
next instant something--for the life of me I knew not what, its
outline was so blurred and indefinite--alighted on the open space in
front of me with a soft thud, and remained standing as bolt upright
as a cylindrical pillar. From afar off, there then came the low rumble
of wheels, which momentarily grew in intensity, until there thundered
into view a waggon, weighed down beneath a monstrous stack of hay, on
the top of which sat a man in a wide-brimmed straw hat, engaged in a
deep confabulation with a boy in corduroys who sprawled beside him.
The horse, catching sight of the motionless "thing" opposite me, at
once stood still and snorted violently. The man cried out, "Hey! hey!
What's the matter with ye, beast?" And then in an hysterical kind of
screech, "Great God! What's yon figure tha