jewelry) and cooking utensils supposed to have been used by some noble
savages or other. Of these and such like she had a museum, and she
visited old monuments and cairns and Roman camps and Druidical remains
and old castles, and all old things, with increasing interest. There
were a number of places near or remote to which she was in the habit
of making periodical pilgrimages--places probably dear to her from
whim or association or natural beauty or antiquity. When she fixed a
time for such an excursion, no weather changed her purpose: it might
pour rain or deep snow might be on the ground: she only put four
horses to her carriage instead of two, and went on her way. She was
generally accompanied in these expeditions by her two young friends,
who got into the spirit of the thing and enjoyed them amazingly. They
were in the habit of driving to some farm-house, where they left the
carriage and on foot ascended the hill they had come to call on, most
probably a hill with the marks of a Roman camp on it--there are many
such in the south of Scotland--hills called "the rings" by the people,
from the way in which the entrenchments circle round them like rings.

Dear to Lady Arthur's heart was such a place as this. Even when the
ground was covered with snow or ice she would ascend with the help of
a stick or umbrella, a faint adumbration of the Alpine Club when as
yet the Alpine Club lurked in the future and had given no hint of its
existence. On the top of such a hill she would eat luncheon, thinking
of the dust of legions beneath her foot, and drink wine to the memory
of the immortals. The coachman and the footman who toiled up the hill
bearing the luncheon-basket, and slipping back two steps for every one
they took forward, had by no means the same respect for the immortal
heroes. The coachman was an old servant, and had a great regard for
Lady Arthur both as his mistress and as a lady of rank, besides being
accustomed to and familiar with her whims, and knowing, as he said,
"the best and the warst o' her;" but the footman was a new acquisition
and young, and he had not the wisdom to see at all times the duty of
giving honor to whom honor is due, nor yet had he the spirit of the
born flunkey; and his intercourse with the nobility, unfortunately,
had not impressed him with any other idea than that they were mortals
like himself; so he remarked to his fellow-servant, "Od! ye wad think,
if she likes to eat her lunch amang snawy