We had been deeply occupied with Michael Scott's supposed grave, and the story of the "dark magic" by which he divided into three, Eildon Hill, in whose caverns Arthur and his warriors still sleep their enchanted sleep; and so, when some strangers approached us, we didn't even look up. A very intelligent custodian, who has written a book about the Abbey, was showing us round at that moment, and telling things about Sir Ralph Evers, whom the Douglases killed for revenge, on Ancrum Moor, and all about the pillar with the "curly green capital." He had saved the Douglas Heart for the last, as the crowning glory in the history of Melrose; but when we'd done some sort of justice to everything else, he marched us into the presbytery where the Heart is buried, and where, according to his theory, it is commemorated in the carved stone tracery of the window.
A man with his back to us turned as we appeared, and I interrupted the custodian's learned discourse by crying out the name most sacred in the Abbey. "Mr. Douglas!" I exclaimed; for it was he—the Douglas soldier-man who was so kind, taking us all round the castle at Carlisle. He said we might meet at Edinburgh, as he was soon to have leave, and intended to visit relatives there, but it was a surprise coming on him in the shrine of his ancestors.
I thought, of course, his arriving at that minute was an extraordinary coincidence; but when Sir S. shook hands, and asked in a matter-of-fact tone, "How is it we meet here?" he confessed, as if half ashamed, that it wasn't exactly an accident. "You see, I often come to Melrose for a look round if I'm in Scotland on leave," he said, "and I saw in the paper yesterday that you were motoring in this neighbourhood, expecting to call at Dryburgh and Melrose before Edinburgh."
"Ah, yes—that interview Aline gave a journalist acquaintance of mine at Dumfries," I heard George Vanneck murmur to Basil, who looked rather cross.
"I arrived at the hotel just after you'd been there to leave your luggage and sign names in the visitors' book," Donald Douglas went on. "They said you were motoring over to Abbotsford, and would come back to see the Abbey later; so it occurred to me, if I strolled over about this time, we might run across each other."
"Quite so," remarked Sir S.; an expression I detest, it sounds so like filing iron, especially as he said it then. However, the soldier-man didn't appear to mind in the least that the Great Somerled was stiff and unsympathetic. He attached himself to me, as I was his only other real acquaintance, except Mrs. James, in the party; and of course, as he reminded me, we were very old friends—as old as the day we first saw each other in the street at Carlisle, years and years ago.
He seemed to know as much as the custodian about Melrose and the Douglas Heart—which was natural, as he so values everything connected with his family name. He told me all about the good Sir James Douglas: how King Robert Bruce when dying begged his friend to take his heart to the Holy Land, and bury it where he had wished to go and fight for Christendom as an expiation for killing the Red Comyn. It was as good as a chapter out of a novel to hear how the Douglas got permission from the new king to be gone seven years on his great adventure; how he heard on his way to Jerusalem that King Alfonso of Spain was fighting the Saracens at Granada, and couldn't resist offering his help, being sure that Robert Bruce would have done the same; how in battle against Osmyn, the Saracen king, he was hard pressed, and taking the casket with Brace's heart in it from over his own heart, he threw it far ahead of him in the enemy's ranks, shouting, "Pass first in fight, as thou wert ever wont. Douglas will follow thee or die!" And how he did both follow and die, but falling only when he had killed many Moslems and hewed his way through their bodies to where the heart lay.
"That's the old story of the Douglas Heart," said the soldier-man, "and there's a new story of the Douglas Heart I hope you'll let me tell you some day before long, because it's even more interesting—to me."
"Why, then, I expect it will be to me too," said I politely, "so why not tell it me now, in Melrose Abbey, the place of all places?"
He looked at me in an odd way, and said, "Yes, it is the place of all places; but I'm afraid it's a little too early in the day——"