eat silver stitches of rivers, the Cluden and the Nith; and there are
old earthworks, fallen into ruin, which guard the Abbey as the skeletons
of watch-dogs might lie guarding a dead master. There's a mound, too, by
the side of the ruined church, and it is called a Mote, which means
something desperately interesting and historic, and there's a Peel-tower
in ruin. Indeed, all is in ruin at Lincluden Abbey; but that makes it
the sweeter and sadder. And as we came, the red of the crumbling
sandstone burned in the fire of sunset like a funeral pyre heaped with
roses. The melancholy, crowding trees and the delicate groups of little
bushes were like mourners coming with their children to look on at the
great burning.

We went into the church to see the tomb of Margaret Countess of Douglas,
who was a daughter of King Robert the Third; and somehow the mutilations
of the effigy made it more beautiful, causing you to see as in a blurred
picture the thousand events of troublous times which had passed over the
figure, leaving it through all peacefully asleep. A daughter of a king,
with the Douglas Heart to guard her, she would be too noble in her stony
slumber to show that she minded losing her features and a few other
trifling accessories which might spoil the looks of less important
women.

When we came out, high in the sunset glory gleamed a silver sickle,
reaping roses. It was the heather moon, and I cried out to Sir S. as I
saw it, "Wish--wish! Your first sight of the heather moon, and over our
right shoulders for luck! Whatever we wish _must_ come true!"

I was so excited that I seized his hand; and he was too polite to give
it back to me like a thing he didn't want. So he held it firmly in his
while we both looked up to the sky, silently making our wishes. My wish
was to be that my mother might love me; but I stopped and thought, "What
is the good of making such a wish, when I've only one, and I'm sure to
get that one without the heather moon, as mothers all love their
children." This caution was very "canny" and proved my Scottish blood, I
couldn't help thinking, as I paused in order to select the most
appropriate wish for the heather moon to grant.

Several ideas presented themselves with a bow: a wish to be happy: but
that wasn't "concrete" enough, as Sir S. would say. A wish to be very
rich and able to do anything in the world I might like to do; but being
rich sounds so fat and uninteresting--or else bald-headed; for