in these expeditions by her two young friends, who got into the spirit of the thing and enjoyed them amazingly.  They were in the habit of driving to some farm-house, where they left the carriage and on foot ascended the hill they had come to call on, most probably a hill with the marks of a Roman camp on it—­there are many such in the south of Scotland—­hills called “the rings” by the people, from the way in which the entrenchments circle round them like rings.

Dear to Lady Arthur’s heart was such a place as this.  Even when the ground was covered with snow or ice she would ascend with the help of a stick or umbrella, a faint adumbration of the Alpine Club when as yet the Alpine Club lurked in the future and had given no hint of its existence.  On the top of such a hill she would eat luncheon, thinking of the dust of legions beneath her foot, and drink wine to the memory of the immortals.  The coachman and the footman who toiled up the hill bearing the luncheon-basket, and slipping back two steps for every one they took forward, had by no means the same respect for the immortal heroes.  The coachman was an old servant, and had a great regard for Lady Arthur both as his mistress and as a lady of rank, besides being accustomed to and familiar with her whims, and knowing, as he said, “the best and the warst o’ her;” but the footman was a new acquisition and young, and he had not the wisdom to see at all times the duty of giving honor to whom honor is due, nor yet had he the spirit of the born flunkey; and his intercourse with the nobility, unfortunately, had not impressed him with any other idea than that they were mortals like himself; so he remarked to his fellow-servant, “Od! ye wad think, if she likes to eat her lunch amang snawy slush, she might get enough of it at the fut o’ the hill, without gaun to the tap.”

“Weel, I’ll no deny,” said the older man, “but what it’s daftlike, but if it is her leddyship’s pleasure, it’s nae business o’ oors.”

“Pleasure!” said the youth:  “if she ca’s this pleasure, her friends should see about shutting her up:  it’s time.”

“She says the Romans once lived here,” said John.

“If they did,” Thomas said, “I daur say they had mair sinse than sit down to eat their dinner in the middle o’ snaw if they had a house to tak it in.”

“Her leddyship does na’ tak the cauld easy,” said John.

“She has the constitution o’ a horse,” Thomas remarked.

“Man,” said John, “that shows a’ that ye ken about horses:  there’s no a mair delicate beast on the face o’ the earth than the horse.  They tell me a’ the horses in London hae the influenza the now.”

“Weel, it’ll be our turn next,” said Thomas, “if we dinna tak something warm.”