"Crockett has done for Galloway what Scott did for Tweedside," said Sir S. "It's his country. He has made it live. When I give this girl the promised present of Carlyle and Shakespeare, I must add Crockett. That is, as she reminded me"—and he smiled—"if Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald allows Ian of that ilk to lay gifts at her daughter's feet."
"Oh, she'll permit Barrie to accept books," said Mrs. James, with her pretty primness. "How the child will love the 'Raiders,' and the 'Men of the Moss Hags.' Yes, certainly she ought to see 'gray Galloway.'"
"Galloway be it, then," said Sir S., looking pleased. "But it won't be gray at this time of year. It will be purple and gold and emerald, and silvered with rivers running between flowery banks. And it will smell sweet as a Scotsman's paradise, with bog myrtle and peat."
"I too have often wanted to see Galloway," said Mrs. James, "even before I read the Crockett books; for the doctor devoted a particularly interesting chapter to its history. I remember well, the ancient name was most romantic: Gallgaidhel, for the country of the stranger Gaels. That was the heading he gave his chapter, and I fear I did not know what 'stranger Gaels' meant until I read it. The Celtic Gaels who lived there used to be called Atecott Picts; and though they were very independent and wild, and the Romans didn't govern them long, they accepted the Northumbrians as their overlords—oh, it must have been in the seventh century, I think. And two hundred years later they made common cause with the Vikings: so the other Gaels, who would have nothing to do with the foreigners, scornfully named the men of Galloway 'stranger Gaels.'"
"It was just jealousy, then!" said I. "Because the people of Galloway were so broad-minded and hospitable, and ahead of their times. It's the right country for strangers to visit first——"
"But we're not strangers," Sir S. cut me short. "You and I, Barrie, are coming into our own. To-night for the first time you'll sleep in your ain countree, under the 'heather moon.'"
"It ought to be a wonderful place, for our first night of the heather moon," I said, half shutting my eyes—"a mysterious, beautiful, lucky place, to remember always. What shall it be? Have you decided on what is appropriate?"
"I'd thought of Dumfries," he said. "But it doesn't answer that description, and though it's in Galloway, it concerns Burns and is out of Crockett land. Still——"
"Sweetheart Abbey!" Mrs. James exclaimed rapturously. "It should be at Sweetheart Abbey that Barrie dreams her first Scottish dreams."
The knight laughed rather bitterly for some reason. "Are Scottish dreams different from other dreams?"