ith their processions passing where we pass now; and
armies returning from battle with their prisoners; and bands of pilgrims
going to some sacred shrine; and robber hordes moving at night; and
wild-beast shows on the way from one fair to another. Can't you see the
panorama?"

I could, easily, picture after picture. But when you come to think of
it, he'd mentioned nothing as curious as motors, which we take quietly
for granted, just as our forefathers took the wild beasts and the
robbers.

We had a glimpse of Burns's "Eden scenes on crystal Jed," though only
enough to be aggravating, for Basil said there were prehistoric caves,
and scenery enough to make a journey to Scotland worth while, if one
came for nothing else. But people in motor-cars never seem to turn aside
for anything. They go toward their destination like creatures possessed.
So, although Jedburgh is supposed to be the most historic town of the
Lowlands, we hardly looked at it in our haste to see the Abbey, and to
rush on to other Abbeys--a dayful of Abbeys! Not that Jedburgh put
itself out to attract us. It had rather a grim air as a town, as if it
hadn't quite forgotten the fierce slogan of the Jedburgh men, who
shouted "Jethart's here!" as they wielded the terrible Jethart axes
invented by themselves. And one isn't allowed to go inside Queen Mary's
house to see the tapestry her ladies worked.

I wished to think no abbey so beautiful as Sweetheart Abbey, which was
my first, and seen on the first night of the heather moon; but I had to
tell myself that Jedburgh was lovelier, in its garden on the river-bank.
Dreaming of its own reflection, its hollow, window-eyes could see, deep
down under a glass, all its own history and legends preserved forever as
in a crystal casket; the story of saintly King David who built it, and
of the French friars who left their own Abbey at Beauvais to people it;
better still, of the wedding with the spectre guest--the marriage of
little French Jolette to Alexander, the last of the Celtic kings.
Perhaps, too, the window-eyes peering into the crystal could see the
figure of Sir Walter Scott, seeking and finding inspiration in the
Abbey's old tales.

Basil, who told me the stories, read in a book that "Jedburgh is
completer than Kelso or Dryburgh, and simpler and more harmonious than
Melrose," so when the four boys appeared at last in Dryburgh Abbey,
having calmly missed out Jedburgh and Kelso to save time, I used the
criticis