. But when
I looked at him in the greatest surprise, he seemed sorry. "I take that
back," he said. "I really don't believe you know yet what the word
means, or what you've done to earn it. Are you contented with me as a
companion, or would you rather have Douglas, or Norman? I should really
like to know, out of sheer curiosity, so you needn't mind telling the
truth, for in any case you won't hurt my feelings."

"Why, but you are my Knight!" I said. And he asked no more questions
then about personal matters. We talked of the scenery, or he let me
talk, and said that it didn't disturb him in driving. He seemed quite to
take an interest in what I had to say, as if I had been an intelligent
person like Mrs. West. He didn't laugh at the high-flown ideas I've
collected about history, and frontiers between countries, but said that
my enthusiasms were contagious.

"I'd given up all hope of a thrill at crossing the border," he said. "I
thought it was too late. 'What's long sought often comes when unsought,'
you know--or rather, you don't know yet, and I hope you never will. You
are making me wonder if, after all, instead of putting off my homecoming
too long, I haven't chosen just the right moment."

I was glad to hear this, though I don't know even now how I managed to
give him that idea, unless by boiling with inward joy, and always
insisting that the world's not old, but young--a wonderful place, where
every flower and bird and every ray of sunlight is worth being born to
see.

I asked him not to tell me when we came to the border, because I hoped
to know it by instinct; and, as it turned out, I _did_ know. But I think
any one with eyes must have known.

Out from old Caer Luel, our road had crossed the Eden where Willie
Armstrong escaped, and ran on white and smooth toward the Solway, whose
sands glistened golden in the sun. The tide, which I'd read of as racing
like a horse at gallop, was busy somewhere else, and the river lay
untroubled, a broad, blue ribbon in the sandy plain where Prince
Charlie's men and horses once struggled and drowned.

Now I knew we must be in the Debatable Lands, the hunting-ground of the
border raiders, beautiful wild land, full of the sound of rivers, voices
of the Teviot and the Eden, the Ettrick and the Yarrow, singing together
and mingling with the voices of poets who loved them. Through the
country of dead Knights of the Road my live Knight of To-day drove
slowly, thinking maybe of dim