We then fetched a long compass round about through Holywood Kirk
and Lincluden ruins to Dumfries. But the walk came sadly to grief
as a pleasure excursion before our return . . .

SUNDAY. - Another beautiful day. My father and I walked into
Dumfries to church. When the service was done I noted the two
halberts laid against the pillar of the churchyard gate; and as I
had not seen the little weekly pomp of civic dignitaries in our
Scotch country towns for some years, I made my father wait. You
should have seen the provost and three bailies going stately away
down the sunlit street, and the two town servants strutting in
front of them, in red coats and cocked hats, and with the halberts
most conspicuously shouldered. We saw Burns's house - a place that
made me deeply sad - and spent the afternoon down the banks of the
Nith. I had not spent a day by a river since we lunched in the
meadows near Sudbury. The air was as pure and clear and sparkling
as spring water; beautiful, graceful outlines of hill and wood shut
us in on every side; and the swift, brown river fled smoothly away
from before our eyes, rippled over with oily eddies and dimples.
White gulls had come up from the sea to fish, and hovered and flew
hither and thither among the loops of the stream. By good fortune,
too, it was a dead calm between my father and me.

R. L. S.



Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL