The Heather-Moon

vely in the same language. I should be doing him a great service, he said, if I could lead him back to fairyland, because he used to know the

days you'll be leaving me with mother, and travelling on alone. You must search for the key to the rainbow wherever you go; because, you know, it might b

from him, though I wanted to, for it was as if he were reading my inmo

w, I can't find it without your help, But no matter. Perhaps I shouldn't

f his eyes. "You're not old or disillusioned. You're a Knight

ot middle-aged, I should have thought it nonsense. But now I see that

near enough to the border last night, to think of you as a princess who'd been shut up in a glass retort, as all really nice pri

!" I interrupted him. "But did y

der of f

er all, to me it seems much the

o for a good many years,"

n Barrie MacDonald; and a gray coat and a gray hood with a long gray veil floating out from it-all the same gray as the car, and chosen to match. I couldn't help thinking, when I put on the hood before the curate's looking-glass, that in spite of a green crack across

a little gray handbag, fitted with brushes and combs and a mirror, and tiny bottles for eau-de-cologne. My fittings look like gold, though I suppose of course they are only gilded; and Mrs. James's are silver. She thought it would hurt his feelings if we refused to accept his presents, t

my heart beat just to see, whenever Heppie and I have come to town shopping. I used to wonder what it would be like to sail through the wide doorway in a car of my own. Poor me, in my "glass retort," wit

hadn't been turned out of her house by Mrs. West, though, when I realized what I was doing, I was afraid she might pretend not to know me. It must make one feel such a worm to be ignored when one has just grinned and ducked! But I needn't have feared. Mr. Norman took off his cap as impressively as if I w

criticise my writing as he offered to do, I couldn't put in suc

emotions and impressions especially for use in motor-cars, and you have to use them there, whether you like or not. I suppose they lay quiescent in people for thousands of years, between the epoch of exciting prehistoric beasts and automobiles; but now they come into play often enough to make up for lost time. Not that I was afraid in the car, even at first: only it did seem as if all the things that moved on the face of the earth

young man you just bowed to?" she asked, when we had

t, who had quarrelled with Mr. Somerled yesterday for some reason he w

James. "By this time, I dare say, she's sorry for

making up means having her in this car, I should

might like to hire it for their trip. And, in spite of Mr. Norman being so kind and different from

for the complexion were the winds that blew from the great moorland spaces beyond the town! I hadn't thought much about all that myself, but certainly Carlisle is romantic as a city, because in history you see how it has always been a solid bulwark of the English, against which tides of invasion dashed themselves in vain-a

e were tall and graceful and gray, instead of dumpy and red-an ochre-red colour which is interesting only when the sun shines on it, or when wet and sparkling with rain, in the midst of its lovely

orts of things. She reads her husband's history books, in order to give him an agreeable surprise when he comes back, and the knowledge she picks up is money in her pocket, because she can pour out floods of information upon inquiring tourists. When she's kindly told them all about the Romans in general and the Augustan Legion in particular, and the Museum, a

nd the strain of centuries on the masonry. It was a startling contrast to go from the Norman part into the choir, all a mass of carving and decoration, wi

any years' exile, but when I cried out that I couldn't believe him so commonplace and dull, he opened his eyes wide, as surprised as if I'd boxed his ears. Mrs. James whispered that I had been rude; and when I stopped to think, I realized how unlike Mrs. West I had been. She is so gracious and complimenta

screens looked new because Cromwell's men whitewashed everything when they stabled horses in the Cathedral, and the white wasn't scraped off till comparatively lately, long after the Cathedral was a prison in 1745, I

ke an enormous box, a good deal battered and patched, containing a kingdom's t

repairs. Even a grown-up man like Mr. Somerled, who has seen everything, looked disappointed; but I suppose he couldn't fight his way in against the power of England; and we should have turned ignominiously away if it hadn't been for Mrs. James. "You are surely not aware," said she in the aristocratic, long-worded

hotographs in shop windows of Robert Loraine, and I had dreamed several times that I was engaged to him, with a gorgeous diamond ring, and afterward that I was his widow in one of those sweet Marie Stuart caps. It almost seemed as if he might see the cap in my eyes, so I hurried to look down, and appear as calm as if I had never met him in the street when out walking with Heppie. Once I dropped my handkerchief, like ladies in books (only I did it on purpose, which they never do if heroines, not villain

t and Mr. Norman," when they came round a screen of masonry, and were upon us. As soon as they saw who we were they stopped, Mrs. West pale, with the same martyred expression, which grew sweeter and sa

I am making an exception of Mr. Somerled's party, and as

k, and only looked, looked, looked at "her friend Mr. Somerled." Her brother awaited a cue until

ighted too, Mrs.

kindness. Mr. Douglas then put himself by my side; and Mrs. West annexed Mr. Somerled, or he annexed her

s the first soldier I'd ever known outside a book. He ask

square, ponderous, forbidding, cool even on a hot August

e) rattled off all the information he could remember about Roman foundations-a sack by the Danes; William the Conqueror, and William Rufus, and a British fort

g. "Are there only three fortresses like this in all England? Do tell me what makes this unique?" And she looked at him so prettily that if I'd been in his place I'd have run to her like a do

could see the staples; and there was one spot of a dreadful fascination, where Donald Douglas held his candle to show a trail of slimy moisture. Always this weeping stone had been there, he said, no one knew why; and in old days, when these dungeons bore the name of

e Armstrong, Kinmont Willie, treacherously given up to Lord Scrope, for the worst dungeon of all, by troopers who in taking him viol

ty men (the English said two hundred, but I know better), attacked the Castle, took it by assault, and carried Willie, with fetters still dangling from his wrists, clear away a

torerooms that they're kept so private. Once these rooms too were prisons; and behind an immense door of oak, almost in darkness, are perfectly wonderful wall-carvings cut into the reddish sandstone by prisoners: figures of men and devils; scenes of history; initi

away from Carlisle to Bolton Castle in 1568. We saw the table-very dark, very rough, looking like a prehistoric animal turned to wood; and Donald Douglas said it was perhaps the oldest table alive in England to-day-as old as King Edward's, and of the shape which gave an idea later for Tudor tables. As he talked, I could almost see Queen Mary sitting by this queer piece of furni

hich must have been a prisoner's "fetich." But it couldn't have brought him luck; otherwise, if he'd been released, he would h

while, when he was young. Few people know about it, or are taken to see it. But it alone would be enough to make the Castle interesting if there were nothing else. Only a few empty, echoing, half-ruinous rooms there are, with a