a tomtit. It's a nasty big slice out of Harry's shooting to have that long bare place taking up room." It was too remote for ladies to picnic in, but one who penetrated as far called it "sweet," and said it reminded her of Dartmoor. The people of the neighbourhood were no better. Keepers took the same view as the Hardriding sportsmen, and the farmer whose lease covered it spoke of it darkly as as "Poaverty Neuk." "Food for neither man nor beast," he said. "" Something might be done with phosphates, but I've no money to spend. It would make a grand dam if any town wanted a water-supply." Good business-like views, but no hint anywhere of the strangeness which to me had made it a kind of sanctuary.

There was one exception, the shepherd of the Nine Stane Rig. He was a young man, with a fiery red head and a taste for poetry. He would declaim Burns and Hogg with gusto, and was noted at "kirns" and weddings for his

robust rendering of songs like "When the Kye come Hame" and "Robin Tamson's Smiddy.' I used to accompany him sometimes on his rounds, and he spoke to me of the Green Glen.

it.

"It's a bonny bit," he once said, waving his arm towards the Green Dod. "And there's ae queer thing about Sheep'll no bide in it. Ye may pit a hirsel in at nicht, and every beast'll be on the tap o' the rig by the mornin'. How d'ye account for that? Mr Yellowlees says the feedin's no guid, and that it wants phosphates. I dinna agree wi' him. I've herdit a' my days, and I never saw better feedin' than by yon burnside. I've no just fawthomed it yet, but I've an idea o' my ain. I think the glen is an auld kirkyaird. I mind when I herdit in Eskdalemuir there was a bit on the hill whaur Covenanters had been buried, and the sheep were aye sweir to gang near it. Some day I'm thinkin' o' gettin' a spade and howkin'. I micht find something queer.

I can see

for several years. him now as I first knew him, a big solemn young man, too heavy for elegance, and an awkward weight for a horse. We met first one spring at Valescure, and a lonely fortnight established a kind of friendship between us. He

I had known him slightly

halting sympathies and interests, for which he rarely found words. His family had

been settled for two generations in Australia, sheepfarming in the good days when the big profits were made. His father had made a second fortune in a gold mine, and, disliking the land legislation of the country, had sold his farms and brought his boy to England. An undistinguished progress through a public school and Oxford had left him without a profession, and, his father having died, with no near relations, and a ridiculous amount of money. He should have been a soldier, but somehow had missed his chance. The man was in no way slack, but he gave me the impression of having no niche to fit into. He was very English in speech and manners, but he seemed to stand outside all the ordinary English occupations and look on. Not that he didn't do most things well. He was a magnificent shot, a first-rate horseman, and the best man to sail a boat I have ever met. He read much, had travelled considerably, and had a keen interest in scientific geography. I thought he had found a job when he took a notion notion of exploring the Brahmaputra gorges, but the expedition fell through and his interest flagged. He belonged to many clubs, and had a few hundred acquaintances; but beyond myself I don't think he had a friend.

He used to come to see me, and I tried to understand what puzzled him. For puzzled he was-not unhappy or disillusioned, but simply puzzled with life. Somehow

he did not fit in with the world around him. I used to think it would have been better if he had never left Australia. There he had a ready-made environment; here in England he had to make his own, and he did not seem to

have the knack of it. People liked him, and thought him, for all his stiffness, a good fellow. But he never accepted anybody or anything as his own; he was always the observant and sympathetic stranger. I began to realise that my friend, with all his advantages, was desperately homeless.

To myself, as I thought about him, I prescribed marriage.

Vix ea nostra VOCO might have been his motto about most things, but in a wife he would find something his very own. The thing was obvious, but I saw also that he would be a hard fellow to marry. He was hopelessly shy and curiously unimpressionable. I do not remember that he ever spoke to me of any woman, and he avoided every chance of meeting them. I only once saw his tall figure at a dance, when he looked like nothing so much as Marius among the ruins of Carthage.

Hunting was his main hobby, and one January I found myself staying under the same roof with him in the Cottesmore country. He was, as I have said, a bold and fine rider, but he had to know his horse, and on this occasion our host mounted both of us. There was an ugly banked fence where he misjudged his animal's powers, and came down in a heap on

I

a hardish bit of ground. thought his neck was broken, and prepared for the worst, as I helped three other whitefaced men to get him clear. But it was only a slight concussion, a broken finger, and a dislocated shoulder. He had a bad night, but next day was little the worse for his fall, and, frost having set in, I spent most of the afternoon in his bedroom.

He wore a ring which I had often noticed, a little engraved carnelian in a heavy setting of Australian gold. In doctoring his hand it had been removed, and now lay on the dressingtable. We were talking idly of runs and spills, and, as we talked, I picked it up and examined it.

The stone was old and curious. There was no motto, and the carving seemed to be a heart transfixed by an arrow. I thought it the ordinary trumpery love-token-Cupid and his darts-when I noticed something more. The heart was crowned, and the barb transfixing it was not an arrow but a spear.

The sight roused me to the liveliest interest. For the cognisance belonged to one house and one house alone. It was Douglas of Cauldshaw who had carried the family badge with this strange difference. Mary of Scots, it was said, had given them the spear, for to the last they had stood by that melancholy lady.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"What? The ring? It was my father's. An ugly thing."

I looked at it again. "It

Did you

has an odd crest.
ever inquire about it?"

He said No. He knew little heraldry, and didn't want to pretend to what didn't belong to him.

Then he corrected himself. He thought that the thing was a family relic, right enough. His father had got the stone in turn from his mother, and had had it reset. He thought, but he wasn't sure, that it had been a long time in his grandmother's family.

"What was her name?" I asked eagerly.

The answer was disappointing. "Brown," he said. “They had the Wooramanga place."

I asked if they came from Scotland. "No," he said. "They were Yorkshire, I think. But wait a bit. I think-yes —I have heard my father say something about the Browns being Scotch-Brouns, you know."

This was a false scent and I tried again. But Linford had nothing to tell me. He had no family papers or jewels or pictures, nothing but the one ring. I could see that he was puzzled at my interest, and to my horror offered to pay the Heralds' College to investigate matters. I made him promise to let the Heralds alone, and tried to get more about his grandmother. She had been a tall thin old lady, as he remembered her, with a northcountry accent. She had disliked Melbourne intensely. That was all he could tell; not a saying or a rhyme or a memory to link her with those who had borne the ring's cognisance.

I heard, however, another startling thing that afternoon.