d--a verse about the
torrent:

Issuing forth one foamy wave,
And wheeling round the Giant's Grave,
White as a snowy charger's tail
Drives down the pass of Moffatdale.

So already we were coming into Scott's country. I remember Birkhill,
because it's the watershed between the Moffat and the Yarrow, and the
word "watershed" goes through my mind with a musical white rush, like a
cataract. It suggests beautiful faraway things. Besides, there's another
reason for remembering. Close by, at Dobbs Linn, the Covenanters used to
hide in the time of the great persecution.

We swept through some bare, bleak country before coming to the Yarrow,
but the rover brought us back to gentle, cultivated land, with thoughts
of her favourite Wordsworth for Mrs. James; and soon we came to a very
famous place, Tibbie Shiels's Inn. I had never heard of it, but that
doesn't take from its fame! Basil and Mrs. James could both tell me how
Scott, and Christopher North, and De Quincey, and a long list of other
great men, used to meet at the house kept by Mrs. Richardson, "Tibbie,"
who outlived all the noble company, and was buried at last in the same
churchyard with the Ettrick Shepherd.

By and by our road dropped down and down to the shores of lonely St.
Mary's Loch (Scott wrote of it in "Marmion"), and at the end of the
still lake to Dryhope Tower, where brave Mary Scott, his ancestress,
"The Flower of Yarrow," had her birthplace.

So we went on to Selkirk on its hill overlooking Ettrick Water, and
stopped just long enough to buy some of the celebrated "bannocks" for
our picnic luncheon later on, and to have a glance at the statues of Sir
Walter Scott and Mungo Park, the African traveller. Basil pretended to
be shocked because I had never heard of him! "And you had never heard of
Aline and me till you met us," he sighed, shaking his head. "I suppose
you never heard of the sutors of Selkirk, either? The burly sutors who
'firmly stood' at Flodden when other 'pow'rful clans gave way'? Well,
I'm glad, anyhow, that we aren't the _only_ people you'd never heard
of!"

Basil seemed very happy, and kind, and _understanding_, somehow, as if
he saw that something was not quite right with me, and he wanted to
console me as well as he could.

Sir S. had managed very clearly about not letting us stop to look at the
town of Burns's death until we'd seen the place of his birth and traced
out the path of his life-story; but he couldn't co