"Do you remember a story we liked when we were children, _The Gold of Fairnilee_? Do you remember how Randal, carried away by the fairies, lived contented until his eyes were touched with the truth-telling water, and then Fairyland lost its glamour and he longed for the old earth he had left, and the changes of summer and autumn, and the streams of Tweed and his friends? "Is it, do you suppose, because we had a Scots mother that I find, deep down within me, that I am 'full of seriousness'? It is rather disconcerting to think oneself a butterfly and find out suddenly that one is a--what? A bread-and-butter fly, shall we say? Something quite solid, anyway. "As I say, I suddenly became deadly sick of everything. I simply couldn't go on. And it was no use going burying myself at Bidborough or even dear Mintern Abbas; it would have been the same sort of trammelled, artificial existence. I wanted something utterly different. Scotland seemed to call to me--not the Scotland we know, not the shooting, yachting, West Highland Scotland, but the Lowlands, the Borders, our mother's countryside. "I remembered how Lewis Elliot (I wonder where he is now--it is ages since I heard of him) used to tell us about a little town on the Tweed called Priorsford. It was his own little town, his birthplace and I thought the name sung itself like a song. I made inquiries about rooms and found that in a little house called Hillview, owned by one Bella Bathgate, I might lodge. I liked the name of the house and its owner, and I hope to find in Priorsford peace and great content. "Having been more or less of a fool for forty years, I am now going to try to get understanding. It won't be easy, for we are told that 'it cannot be gotten with gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.... No mention shall be made of coral and pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.' "I am going to walk on the hills all day, and in the evening I shall read the Book of Job and Shakespeare and Sir Walter.