her what time we were to see
the Abbey. Basil and I were left together--quite as usual, lately. He
made some rather nice poetical remarks about the house at Abbotsford:
how marvellously it expressed the personality and tendency of Sir
Walter's mind; and how it seemed to him that here was the true heart of
Scotland embalmed in spices and laid in a shrine, just as Robert Bruce's
heart lies at Melrose. I hardly listened, though, for I was wondering so
much what Sir S. would have gone on to say about the amulet if Basil had
let us alone a minute longer. But fairy fancies were in the air, in one
form or other. As we walked up the narrow path which would bring us to
the motor, Basil told me a dream he'd had the night before. "I thought,"
he said, "that I was a humble reincarnation of Thomas Ecildoune--Thomas
the Rhymer--and that I was walking in the Rhymer's Glen--it isn't far
out of this neighbourhood, you know--when a Vision in a magic motor-car
came sprinting down the steep curve of a rainbow. In front of my feet,
the Vision contrived to stop the car, or in another second it would have
run over me. Out she stepped and announced that she was the Queen of the
Fays, whom I would remember meeting before in my last incarnation, in
the same place. Strange to say, she looked exactly like you--and I must
add, she acted exactly as you do."

"Why, what was it she did?" I couldn't help wanting to know.

"She heartlessly vanished, just as I began to hope she might remain and
become my muse. You always vanish--and generally with another man."

We both laughed, and were laughing still when we came up with Mrs. James
and Mrs. Vanneck, Mrs. West and Sir S., who were ahead of us with the
others.

It had to be sunset and moonlight together for Melrose Abbey, for the
heather moon was still too young to be allowed by Mother Earth to sit up
late, all alone in the sky. This was not the "pale moonlight" Sir Walter
wrote of, and looked to for inspiration in his "Lay of the Last
Minstrel," but a light of silvered rose which seemed made for love and
joy. I thought, if an alchemist or magician should pour melted gold and
silver together in a rose-coloured glass, and hold it up to the sun, it
would give out a light like this. It might have been an elixir of life,
for it gave back the Abbey's youth, and more than its youthful beauty.
The bullet-shattered stone turned to blocks of pink and golden topaz,
and each carving stood out clear, rimmed with