between their herdsmen when baiting
in their summer shielings with their cattle, they agreed to have the
tract divided. The age of land-surveyors had not yet come; but,
selecting two old women of seventy-five, they sent them out at the same
hour, to meet among the hills, the one from Fairburn Tower, the other
from Erchless Castle, after first binding themselves to accept their
place of meeting as the point at which to set up the boundary-stone of
the two properties. The women, attended by a bevy of competent
witnesses, journeyed as if for life and death; but the Fairburn woman,
who was the laird's foster-mother, either more zealous or more active
than the Chisholm one, travelled nearly two miles for her one; and when
they came in sight of each other in the waste, it was far from the
fields of Fairburn, and comparatively at no great distance from those of
the Chisholm. It is not easy knowing why they should have regarded one
another in the light of enemies; but at a mile's distance their flagging
pace quickened into a run, and, meeting at a narrow rivulet, they would
fain have fought; but lacking, in their utter exhaustion, strength for
fighting and breath for scolding, they could only seat themselves on the
opposite banks, and _girn_ at one another across the stream. George
Cruikshank has had at times worse subjects for his pencil. It is, I
believe, Landor, in one of his "imaginary conversations," who makes a
Highland laird inform Adam Smith that, desirous to ascertain, in some
sort of conceivable degree, the size of his property, he had placed a
line of pipers around it, each at such a distance from his nearest
neighbour that he could barely catch the sound of his bagpipe; and that
from the number of pipers required he was able to form an approximate
estimate of the extent of his estate. And here, in a Highland tradition,
genuine at least as such, are we introduced to an expedient of the kind
scarce less ludicrous or inadequate than that which Landor must, in one
of his humorous moods, have merely imagined.

I returned to the inn at the hour from which, as I have said, it would
be possible for us, and not more than possible, to complete our day's
journey; and finding, as I had anticipated, no trace of Click-Clack, we
set off without him. Our way led us through long moory straths, with
here and there a blue lake and birch wood, and here and there a group of
dingy cottages and of irregular fields; but the general scenery