more I
think of Scotland the more I tell myself she is like a wise connoisseur
(I hope that's the word!) who goes ahead of others to a sale of splendid
pictures, and secures the finest for herself at a bargain. Several of
the prettiest pictures hang on the blue-and-gold walls of the Burns
country.

We came suddenly into view of Arran when the car had spun us along an up
and down road to Ochiltree and Cumnock. It was I who, looking back,
first caught sight of the jagged pinnacles boldly painted in purple on a
far, pale sky. I didn't know what they were, but Sir S. put on the
brakes quickly, and let us stop to look. He remembered the cliffs, and
gazed at them with a light in his eyes which would have told me, if I
hadn't known before, that he had been homesick for Scotland all these
rich, successful years, whether consciously or not.

By and by we came to the Nith, which afterward we did not leave; and
through a green glen wound the "sweet Afton" Burns wrote of and loved
almost as dearly as he loved its elder brother. Here in this valley,
companioned with his own starry thoughts, he walked and rode, happy in
his fellowship with Nature, even though poverty made him an exciseman at
fifty pounds a year. He had to put down smuggling with one hand and
write his glorious poetry with the other, as Mrs. James expressed it. At
New Cumnock he would spend a night sometimes on his way to Ellisland,
his "farm that would not pay," near Dumfries.

Always following in the track of Burns, the Gray Dragon dashed up and
down short, steep, switchbacked hills (which must have tried any steed
of ancient days except a witch's broomstick) and whisked us into
Sanquhar, the "sean cathair" or "old fortress" of earliest Gaelic times,
now snappily called "Sanker." There Queen Mary rested, going to
Dundrennan after the terrible battle of Langside; there Prince Charlie
marched; and there was a monument of granite to the Covenanters Cameron
and Renwick. Burns must have dreamed of Queen Mary when duty brought him
to Sanquhar; and Renwick would have been a person to appeal to him,
because of his youth and good looks, and because the "pretty lad" was
the last martyr to the Covenant. But perhaps he thought most of all of
that Admirable Crichton who was born at Sanquhar, not in the castle of
his wild and brilliant family, but at Eliock House. Burns would maybe
have liked him not so much for taking his degree at St. Andrews when he
was twelve, or for know