rolling mountains to snowpeaks
that dazzled in the sun, and under our eyes seemed to lie all Scotland,
spread out like a vast brocaded mantle of many colours: the plain of the
Forth, the Ochil hills and the hills of Fife; the purple peaks round
Loch Lomond, and here and there a glitter of water like broken glass on
a floor of gold. Ten counties we could see, and eight great battlefields
which helped to make Scotland what it is. The horizon was carved in
shapes of azure--strange, wild, mountainous shapes; and the noble heads
of Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, and Ben A'an were laurelled and jewelled for us
by memories of Scott.

Sitting where Queen Mary sat on her velvet cushions, and looking through
her peephole in the thick stone wall, I was almost irresistibly tempted
to make love to Barrie. My heart so went out to her that it seemed she
must respond: and the Vannecks had wandered to another part of the
battlements; but she kept me to my task of cicerone. I had to answer a
dozen questions. I had to tell her about Agricola forging his chain of
forts across the narrow land between the Clyde, and the Forth "that
bridles the wild Highlander." She would be satisfied with nothing less
than the unabridged stories of Edward I's siege of this "gray bulwark of
the North," the murder of the powerful Douglas by his treacherous host
King James II; the building of and the mysterious curse upon Mar's Work,
and twenty other human documents not half so moving, had she but known
it, as the story of Basil Norman's first and only love. Once or twice I
thought she guessed that I wished to speak of myself and her, and that
she deliberately held me at arm's length, like a young person of the
world dealing with an ineligible at the end of her second season. I
almost hated King Edward, and more especially Agricola!

Then, worst of all, before we had half finished our tour of the Castle
and its wonders, rain began to fall out of one cloud stationed directly
over our heads in the midst of a sun-bright sky. I could almost have
believed that Somerled in spite had sent it after us, like a wet
blood-hound to track us down. We took shelter in the room where the
Douglas was murdered; and who could make love against such a background?
Not I: though perhaps gay King James V might have been equal to it. One
does not hear that any ghost dogged his footsteps as he crept joyously
in disguise out from that dark little chamber into the subterranean
passage, which led