ve it; and Sir S.
stopped the car to let us get out and look down. The water was a clear
green with glints of purple, as if beds of heather grew underneath.
There were jagged, bare rocks, and rocks whose shoulders were half
covered as if with torn coats of faded brocade, dim silver of lichen,
and pale pink of wild flowers. I hoped that Sir S. might join me for a
look at the heather moon lying deep in the lake like a broken bracelet,
but he didn't come. He looked at me very kindly from a distance, not
coldly, yet not warmly, and he stayed with Mrs. West.

It was Basil who told me about Robert Bruce and his men hiding here, and
rolling huge stones on the heads of the English soldiers who marched
along the bank of the lake in search of the "outlaws." It seemed as if
nothing terrible could have happened in so sweet a wilderness; but that
was not the only horror. There were other wild deeds in history, and in
the story of the "Raiders," memories of hunts for Covenanters, and great
killings. But now all is peace, and I should have thought Loch Trool
forgotten by the world if, in a dell of birch, rowan, hazel trees, and
great pines like green umbrellas, I had not spied a roof.

Sir S. said it was the roof of Lord Galloway's shooting-lodge, loved by
its owner because it was "out of tourist zone." So much the worse for
tourists! So much the better for Lord Galloway!

I should hate to think of the road to Loch Trool smoking with motor
dust. Of course our own Gray Dragon's pure dust is a different matter!

As we ran out of Crockett land into Ayrshire we came into Wallace land;
for every foot of Scotland is taken up twice over by something or
somebody wonderful. There isn't an inch left for new history-makers. If
we could see those "emanations" Sir S. talks of--those ghost
pictures--as far as the eye could reach we should see men marching,
splendid men and women, too, who have made the world shine with their
deeds, processions coming from every direction, out of the dim beginning
of things up to the present day.

After the wildness of Loch Trool we had a country of plenteousness and
peace. Basil said it was like a Surrey set down by the sea, so I suppose
Surrey has big trees and flowery hedges and rolling downs, purple with
heather. But surely no heather can be as purple as Scottish heather?

The sands of Girvan seemed to float like a golden scarf on the blue sea,
and the town looked a romantic, mediaeval place till we shot in