mptying both, making its current, as it
glides by, like a rich stream glittering in the sunbeams with the sparkling
lustre of their wit. Lord, how I'm blown! Fill my pannikin, Charley.
There's no subduing a Scot. Talk with him, drink with him, fight with him,
and he'll always have the last of it; there's only one way of concluding
the treaty--"

"And that is--"

"Blarney him. Lord bless you, he can't stand it! Tell him Holyrood's like
Versailles, and the Trossach's finer than Mont Blanc; that Geordie Buchanan
was Homer, and the Canongate, Herculaneum,--then ye have him on the hip.
Now, ye never can humbug an Irishman that way; he'll know you're quizzing
him when you praise his country."

"Ye are right, Hampden," said the Scotch doctor, in reply to some
observation. "We are vara primitive in the Hielands, and we keep to our ain
national customs in dress and everything; and we are vara slow to learn,
and even when we try we are nae ower successfu' in our imitations, which
sometimes cost us dearly enough. Ye may have heard, may be, of the M'Nab o'
that ilk, and what happened him with the king's equerry?"

"I'm not quite certain," said Hampden, "if I ever heard the story."

"It's nae muckle of a story; but the way of it was this. When Montrose came
back from London, he brought with him a few Englishers to show them the
Highlands, and let them see something of deer-stalking,--among the rest, a
certain Sir George Sowerby, an aide-de-camp or an equerry of the prince.
He was a vara fine gentleman, that never loaded his ain gun, and a'most
thought it too much trouble to pull the trigger. He went out every
morning to shoot with his hair curled like a woman, and dressed like a
dancing-master. Now, there happened to be at the same time at the castle
the Laird o' M'Nab; he was a kind of cousin of the Montrose, and a rough
old tyke of the true Hieland breed, wha' thought that the head of a clan
was fully equal to any king or prince. He sat opposite to Sir George at
dinner the day of his arrival, and could not conceal his surprise at the
many new-fangled ways of feeding himself the Englisher adopted. He ate his
saumon wi' his fork in ae hand, and a bittock of bread in the other. He
would na touch the whiskey; helped himself to a cutlet wi' his fingers. But
what was maist extraordinary of all, he wore a pair o' braw white gloves
during the whole time o' dinner and when they came to tak' away the cloth,
he drew them off with a great