ntrive the same kind
of trip for Sir Walter Scott's country without going over the whole road
twice. Besides, he wanted us to see Melrose by moonlight, and said it
would be "incomparably better than Sweetheart Abbey." But I knew it
wouldn't be better for me, and I didn't quite forgive him for thinking
it possible, now that we had got so mixed up with irrelevant people.

We had to go to Jedburgh first, the place farthest south; then to
Dryburgh; then flashing through Melrose to Abbotsford, where Scott died
as well as lived; and then back to Melrose for the night. That was his
plan; and I still supposed that we were to go on somewhere else next
day--Sunday--not arriving in Edinburgh till Monday. But it seems that
Sir S. had made up his mind to a different programme, though he said
nothing about it then.

Things happened to the boys' car on the way to Jedburgh, though the road
was good, and only undulating. Basil said that, as a matter of fact, he
had "ill-wished" them and their auto, and as "thoughts are things," he
had created the nail on which their tire came to grief. "Somerled and I
want to be the only ones," he added mysteriously. "We'll have no
interlopers." Which would have made me think him rather a frivolous
person, after all, if he hadn't been so well up in the lore of the road,
and known so many interesting things about Jedburgh, the county town of
Roxburghshire.

"If we curse a mere nail on a white velvet road-surface nowadays," said
he, "think what the roads must have been like when Jedburgh had a royal
castle, and kings and queens were travelling about from one of their
houses to another! Think what Queen Mary must have had to endure, even
bringing things down to modern times, comparatively. She stayed in
Jedburgh town, in an old house in Queen Street--came for assizes, I
think. Then, while she was there, bored to death, she heard that
Bothwell was 'sick of a wound' at Hermitage Castle, over twenty miles
distant. In an hour she was on her palfrey and off to see him, falling
into a morass on the way. But she got back again that night, rather than
her good subjects should say she neglected their affairs. She fell ill
with fever after her exertions. What wouldn't she have given for a
motor-car? But how she would have been bumped and bruised if she'd had
one, though the roads were grand then compared to the state they'd
fallen into after the Romans marched out of Scotland. Imagine the early
kings and queens w