Jone and I have got so much more to see before we go home, that it is very well we are both able to skip around lively.  Of course there are ever and ever so many places that we want to go to, but can’t do it, but I am bound to see the Highlands and the country of the “Lady of the Lake.”  We have been reading up Walter Scott, and I think more than I ever did that he is perfectly splendid.  While we was in Edinburgh we felt bound to go and see Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford.  I shall not say much about these two places, but I will say that to go into Sir Walter Scott’s library and sit in the old armchair he used to sit in, at the desk he used to write on, and see his books and things around me, gave me more a feeling of reverentialism than I have had in any cathedral yet.

As for Melrose Abbey, I could have walked about under those towering walls and lovely arches until the stars peeped out from the lofty vaults above; but Jone and the man who drove the carriage were of a different way of thinking, and we left all too soon.  But one thing I did do:  I went to the grave of Michael Scott the wizard, where once was shut up the book of awful mysteries, with a lamp always burning by it, though the flagstone was shut down tight on top of it, and I got a piece of moss and a weed.  We don’t do much in the way of carrying off such things, but I want Corinne to read the “Lady of the Lake,” and then I shall give her that moss and that weed, and tell where I got them.  I believe that, in the way of romantics, Corinne is going to be more like me than like Jone.

To-morrow we go to the Highlands, and we shall leave our two big trunks in the care of the man in the red coat, who is commander-in-chief at the Royal Hotel, and who said he would take as much care of them as if they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and good care, too.

Letter Number Twenty-two

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KINLOCH RANNOCH.

It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy of my soul was all the same.  There was an old gentleman got into our carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than he used to be—­I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made the change—­he began to tell us all about the places we were passing through.  There didn’t seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn’t a bit of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.

We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch.  The wind blew strong and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.  And with the cool breeze, and remembering “Scots wha ha’ wi’ Wallace bled,” it made my blood tingle all the way.