On such occasions, Stair, being in furious haste, took the bundle of clean clothes Jean had brought him, and strode away over the rough fells in the direction of the Wild. Half-way, however, he changed his course. And many a night wanderer on land and many a benighted fisherman bearing up Loch Ryan-ward on the northward set of the tide, was awed by a strange light in the Corpse Yard above the Elrich Strand, where the Blackshore folk bury the drowned who come to them from the sea. Here among the wooden head-boards (bearing dates only) of the unknown dead, Stair Garland read his first letter from Patsy in London. "Stair" (it began without qualitative either formal or affectionate), "I did not promise to write to you, so I am doing it. London is very full of gay things which are not so gay as they look. I would rather see you and Whitefoot (give him a kiss from me!) than the procession of the Regent to open Parliament. "The Princess would spoil me were I spoilable. But you know I am made of the guinea gold that does not need gilding. However, she does her best. I have a maid to wait on me, but I think I do very much more for her. Still, she mends the holes that I dance in the heels of my stockings--all of silk, Stair, and smuggled from France! For they 'run' things here, just as they do in Galloway--in Sussex and Cornwall mainly. They have only luggers, however--at least so one of my partners told me last night. He had seen John Carter himself down at Prussia Cove! Think of that, Stair! And the old man had preached him a sermon! "I have dresses in Valenceens lace over pale-blue silk, and all sorts of lovely things; don't you wish you could see me? I see Louis often, but not so often as I used to. They say he is in love with Mrs. Arlington, a great beauty at the Regent's court. You know that Louis is now aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, who is Commander-in-Chief, so his chief duty is to draw up ball programmes and write dinner invitations, which I have no doubt he does in a very warlike manner. "When he remembers he comes round to tell me that he loves me still. But, alas! he mostly forgets. Whitefoot is more faithful than that, eh, Stair? I could wager that at the moment you are reading this nonsense, he is sitting with his head on your knees, looking up in your face." (Stair put down his hand from the edge of the paper and touched the rough head, and at the caress Whitefoot whined joyously, as he did in church when the congregation sang "Coleshill.")