a silly and far-fetched suspicion. It was more likely that he
disapproved of my "larking" with the American boys and giving them a
glove to divide in bits. Afterward, too, when they turned up at our
hotel, he might easily have thought I'd encouraged them to follow us
again.

I hoped for a chance to put that idea out of his mind, but next morning,
starting for Melrose, Vedder had the place next Sir S., and Basil, Mrs.
James, and I were all three together behind.

We started before Aline West and her friends the Vannecks (her special
one is a widower, very rich, who has proposed several times, she told
Mrs. James); but the four boys waited for us to get off again, so they
might know where we were going; and I began to be almost angry, because
of the wrong impression their nonsense was making on Sir S. It had been
so good to get him back yesterday that it was worse than ever so see him
slipping quietly away once more.

If it hadn't been for these worries, it would have been a wonderful day.

From Dumfries we ran up and down nice scallopy hills, crossing the Annan
at a place named Beattock, for Moffat, where there are sulphur wells a
girl discovered two hundred years ago, and made the fortune of the town.
Then there was a lovely road along Moffat Water, with a succession of
wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we
were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom
he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie
brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the
Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he
wrote a Covenanter story, "Brownie of Bodesbeck," about a mountain we
could see hovering in the distance.

All Moffatdale looked a haunt for fairies, so no wonder it is cram full
of legends; and if I had been sitting with Sir S. I should have begged
him to stop and let us scramble up a rocky path to the haunt of a pale
spirit disguised as a waterfall. The Gray Mare's Tail is a disguising
name, too, for there is nothing gray about it, but all white as
streaming moonlight; and Sir S. and I together might have stood a good
chance of finding the rainbow key, sparkling on some cushion of
irridescent spray. We missed the chance, however; and who knows if it
will ever come again?

Basil had bought a volume of Scott's poems for me, to match the Burns's
and he found in "Marmion"--where he knew it existe