lowly died out as a race, and had married with the Scots, leaving a
strain of their blood in the land to this day. "You know," he said,
"that Somerled of the Isles married a Pictish princess, and so there's
Pictish blood in the veins of the MacDonalds, in your veins and in mine,
though I'm of cottage birth, and you are of the castle."

"I know that story of Somerled," I answered, "and how, hero though he
was, he got his princess by a fraud. It makes Kim seem more human."

"I wonder if his princess thought so?" said Somerled the Second.

"Why, of course she did," I answered him as if I were in her confidence.

When I was in Carlisle, and proud of my English birth, I used to like
reading about the great battle of the Solway Moss, where two hundred
English horsemen killed or took prisoners more than a thousand Scots
they'd chased into the bog; but now I've forgotten everything except
that I'm a Scottish lass; and though I'm of the Highlands, and these
were Lowland men, I don't, as I did, love to dwell upon the raid of the
Solway Moss. Still, I could not get it out of my head, and while I
pictured it, as I have to do most things, whether I wish or no, I saw a
bridge--a fine stone bridge, flung like the span of a petrified rainbow
across a small stream.

"That must be the Sark!" I gasped. "And we've come--we've come to the
border!"

"Good lass, to divine it!" said he. And how I liked his calling me a
good lass--it was better than princess!

We crossed the bridge slowly, lingering with half the car in England,
half in Scotland; then suddenly we sprang on gayly, with a rush ahead,
past the famous toll-house, which looked exactly like all its pictures.

"Ho for Scotland--our ain countree!" I cried; and though he did not turn
to me, I saw his profile looking flushed and glad.

"Now you should take back your own name of MacDonald again, from this
very minute of crossing the border," I said, when I had drawn in my
first long breath of Scotland. "Somerled's a grand name, yet it was only
the foundation of MacDonald. But I forgot! You've made your fame and
money as Somerled. Which do you love more--your Scottish blood or your
American fame and fortune?"

"Blood is stronger than water, and fame is running water," he said. "As
for the money, I've cared too much for it--at least for the power it
gave me. I didn't make the most of it with my pictures, and greed led me
to love it better than my true work. That's why I lost the w