w.

A man with his back to us turned as we appeared, and I interrupted the
custodian's learned discourse by crying out the name most sacred in the
Abbey. "Mr. Douglas!" I exclaimed; for it was he--the Douglas
soldier-man who was so kind, taking us all round the castle at Carlisle.
He said we might meet at Edinburgh, as he was soon to have leave, and
intended to visit relatives there, but it was a surprise coming on him
in the shrine of his ancestors.

I thought, of course, his arriving at that minute was an extraordinary
coincidence; but when Sir S. shook hands, and asked in a matter-of-fact
tone, "How is it we meet here?" he confessed, as if half ashamed, that
it wasn't exactly an accident. "You see, I often come to Melrose for a
look round if I'm in Scotland on leave," he said, "and I saw in the
paper yesterday that you were motoring in this neighbourhood, expecting
to call at Dryburgh and Melrose before Edinburgh."

"Ah, yes--that interview Aline gave a journalist acquaintance of mine at
Dumfries," I heard George Vanneck murmur to Basil, who looked rather
cross.

"I arrived at the hotel just after you'd been there to leave your
luggage and sign names in the visitors' book," Donald Douglas went on.
"They said you were motoring over to Abbotsford, and would come back to
see the Abbey later; so it occurred to me, if I strolled over about this
time, we might run across each other."

"Quite so," remarked Sir S.; an expression I detest, it sounds so like
filing iron, especially as he said it then. However, the soldier-man
didn't appear to mind in the least that the Great Somerled was stiff and
unsympathetic. He attached himself to me, as I was his only other real
acquaintance, except Mrs. James, in the party; and of course, as he
reminded me, we were very old friends--as old as the day we first saw
each other in the street at Carlisle, years and years ago.

He seemed to know as much as the custodian about Melrose and the Douglas
Heart--which was natural, as he so values everything connected with his
family name. He told me all about the good Sir James Douglas: how King
Robert Bruce when dying begged his friend to take his heart to the Holy
Land, and bury it where he had wished to go and fight for Christendom as
an expiation for killing the Red Comyn. It was as good as a chapter out
of a novel to hear how the Douglas got permission from the new king to
be gone seven years on his great adventure; how he heard on his wa