We were to stop at Peterborough, and walk out to where, "on that ensanguined block at Fotheringay," the queenliest queen of them all laid her head and died that her son, James Sixth of Scotland, might become First of England. We stopped at York for the minster, and because Alexander III was here married to Margaret, daughter of Henry III; and their daughter being married to Eric of Norway in those old days when Scotland and Norway were kin, became mother to the Maid of Norway, one of the most pathetic and outstanding figures in Scottish history, simply because she died--and from her death came divisions to the kingdom. [Illustration: JAMES VI.] We paused at Durham, where in that gorgeous tomb St. Cuthbert lies buried after a brave and Scottish life. We only looked across the purpling sea where already the day was fading, where the slant rays of the sun shone on Lindisfarne, which the spirit of St. Cuthbert must prefer to Durham. All unconsciously an old song came to sing itself as I looked across that wide water-- "My love's in Germanie, Send him hame, send him hame, My love's in Germanie, Fighting for royalty, He's as brave as brave can be, Send him hame, send him hame!" Full many a lass has looked across this sea and sung this lay--and shall again. The way is filled with ghosts, long, long processions, moving up and down the land. A boundary is always a lodestone, a lodeline. Why do men establish it except that other men dispute it? In the old days England called it treason for a Borderer, man or woman, to intermarry with Scotch Borderer. The lure, you see, went far. Even so that kings and ladies, David and Matilda, in the opposing edges of the Border, married each other. And always there was Gretna Green. Agricola came this way, and the Emperor Severus. There is that interesting, far-journeying Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the "Gil Blas of the Middle Ages," who later became Pius II. He came to this country by boat, but becoming afraid of the sea, returned by land, even opposite to the way we are going. Froissart came, but reports little. Perhaps Chaucer, but not certainly. George Fox came and called the Scots "a dark carnal people." With the Act of Union the stream grows steady and full. There is Ben Jonson, trudging along the green roadway out yonder; for on foot, and all the way from London, he came northward to visit William Drummond of Hawthornden. Who would not journey to such a name? But, alas, a fire destroyed "my journey into Scotland sung with all the adventures." All that I know of Ben is that he was impressed with Lomond--two hundred years before Scott. And there trails Taylor, "water poet," hoping to rival Rare Ben, on his "Pennyless Pilgrimage," when he actually went into Scotland without a penny, and succeeded in getting gold to further him on his way--"Marr, Murraye, Elgin, Bughan, and the Lord of Erskine, all of these I thank them, gave me gold to defray my charges in my journey."