however, from the succeeding instalment of facts,
that though the guardian angel of Heriot Walkingshaw might go the pace
with him thus far, it would probably have been beyond the power even of
a genuinely celestial spirit to keep at his shoulder when he spurted.

PART IV

CHAPTER I

Archibald Berstoun of that ilk ("of y' ilk" was the form that most
delicately tickled his palate) still dwelt in the fortalice built by
his ancestors at a time when to the average Scot the national tartan
suggested but an alien barbarian who stole his cattle; and the national
bagpipe, the national heather, and the national whisky were merely the
noise the brute made, the cover that preserved him from the gallows, and
the stuff that gave you your one chance of catching him asleep.

(A few reflections on the whirligig of time were here inserted, but have
since been omitted, as they were found to occur in a modified form
elsewhere.)

The castle stood in the lowland part of Perthshire, and was erected by
the second of that ilk as a tribute to the dexterity with which his
highland neighbors had removed the effects and cut the throat of the
first. It was a sober and simple building, steep-roofed and battlemented
at the top, turreted at the angles, and pierced with a few narrow
windows so irregularly scattered about its gray harled walls as
to suggest that no two rooms could possibly be on the same level.
Naturally, the architectural genius who illumines the quiet annals of
every landed family had knocked out a number of French windows into the
lawn and constructed the first story of a Chinese pagoda, in which he
proposed to store Etruscan curios with an aviary above; but his
descendants had fortunately lacked the funds to complete these
improvements. In fact, the stump of the pagoda was now so entirely
overgrown with ivy that it had become the traditional fortress of
Agricola.

This ancient habitation of a hard-fighting race was framed on two sides
by a garden that looked as old as the walls which towered above it, and
was well-nigh as simple and sober. Dark clipped yews, and smooth green
grass, and graceful old-world flowers were its chief and sufficient
ingredients. The genius who designed the pagoda had not yet turned his
attention to the garden when Providence checked his career.

A wood of black Scotch firs stretched for a long way beyond this
pleasant garden, and struck a stern northern note befitting the gnarled
battl