.
"The child has had no novels to read later than Scott."

"Crockett has done for Galloway what Scott did for Tweedside," said Sir
S. "It's his country. He has made it live. When I give this girl the
promised present of Carlyle and Shakespeare, I must add Crockett. That
is, as she reminded me"--and he smiled--"if Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald
allows Ian of that ilk to lay gifts at her daughter's feet."

"Oh, she'll permit Barrie to accept books," said Mrs. James, with her
pretty primness. "How the child will love the 'Raiders,' and the 'Men of
the Moss Hags.' Yes, certainly she ought to see 'gray Galloway.'"

"Galloway be it, then," said Sir S., looking pleased. "But it won't be
gray at this time of year. It will be purple and gold and emerald, and
silvered with rivers running between flowery banks. And it will smell
sweet as a Scotsman's paradise, with bog myrtle and peat."

"I too have often wanted to see Galloway," said Mrs. James, "even before
I read the Crockett books; for the doctor devoted a particularly
interesting chapter to its history. I remember well, the ancient name
was most romantic: Gallgaidhel, for the country of the stranger Gaels.
That was the heading he gave his chapter, and I fear I did not know what
'stranger Gaels' meant until I read it. The Celtic Gaels who lived there
used to be called Atecott Picts; and though they were very independent
and wild, and the Romans didn't govern them long, they accepted the
Northumbrians as their overlords--oh, it must have been in the seventh
century, I think. And two hundred years later they made common cause
with the Vikings: so the other Gaels, who would have nothing to do with
the foreigners, scornfully named the men of Galloway 'stranger Gaels.'"

"It was just jealousy, then!" said I. "Because the people of Galloway
were so broad-minded and hospitable, and ahead of their times. It's the
right country for strangers to visit first----"

"But we're not strangers," Sir S. cut me short. "You and I, Barrie, are
coming into our own. To-night for the first time you'll sleep in your
ain countree, under the 'heather moon.'"

"It ought to be a wonderful place, for our first night of the heather
moon," I said, half shutting my eyes--"a mysterious, beautiful, _lucky_
place, to remember always. What shall it be? Have you decided on what is
appropriate?"

"I'd thought of Dumfries," he said. "But it doesn't answer that
description, and though it's in Galloway, it concern