the "Guid man of Ballangeich" to his Haroun
Al-raschid adventures in the night.

* * * * *

The next few days live in my memory as dreams live. They were beautiful.
They would have been more beautiful if I could have flattered myself
that Barrie was learning to care for me in the way she might have cared
for Somerled, if we had left them in peace. But she was always the
same--except that, as the world grew more enchanting in beauty and
poetic associations, she blossomed into a sweet expansiveness, losing
the reserve in which she had been veiled when first we started.

It ought to have been ideal, this moving from scene to scene with the
one girl I ever wanted for my own, since I was thirteen and worshipped a
tank mermaid in green spangles. That was the hard part! It ought to have
been ideal and--it wasn't. I should think a rather well meaning Saracen
chieftain who had captured a Christian maiden might have felt somewhat
as I felt from day to day. He had got her. She couldn't escape from him
and his fortress; but, even with her hand in his, she contrived to elude
him.

So it was with me. Old Blunderbore went well on the whole, not counting
a few minor ailments of second childhood which attacked him occasionally
when he saw a stiff hill ahead, or when he had heard me say I was in a
hurry. The Vannecks were perfection as chaperons, not through
supernatural tact and unselfishness, but because Maud feared the effect
upon Fred of too much Barrie. She laid herself out to charm her husband.
Never an "I told you so!" Never a nagging word or look. She chatted to
Fred in the car, and saw sights with him out of the car. This, she said,
was almost like a second honeymoon. But of the heather moon she had
never heard. It was ours--Barrie's and mine: yet I could not induce the
girl to speak of it. For all she would say, she might have forgotten its
existence. Always, especially when the heather moon tried to give us its
golden blessing, an invisible presence seemed to stand between us, as if
Somerled had sent his astral body to keep us apart.

As to Somerled in the flesh, there was a mystery at this time. To me at
Perth came a telegram from Aline saying:

"S. has left his car and chauffeur here and gone away without a
word to any one. Has he come after you? Wire immediately."

I obeyed, replying:

"Seen and heard nothing of S. Will let you have all news. Hope you
will do the