he covering doing
duty both for plaid and kilt. Clothes of some kind were provided for him
at the cottage, a rickety old boat was fetched, and he and his stag were
rowed across the river to the place where his clothes lay.

That is all, but if one were a dealer in romance, much play might be made
with the future fortunes of the sportsman and the maiden, happy fortunes
or unhappy. In real life, the lassie "drew up with" a shepherd lad, as
Miss Jenny Denison has it, married him, and helped to populate the
strath. As for Dick, history tells no more of his adventures, nor is it
alleged that he ever again visited the distant valley, or beheld the face
of his Highland Nausicaa.

Now, if one were a romancer, this mere anecdote probably would "rest,
lovely pearl, in the brain, and slowly mature in the oyster," till it
became a novel. Properly handled, the incident would make a very
agreeable first chapter, with the aid of scenery, botany, climate, and
remarks on the manners and customs of the red deer stolen from St. John,
or the Stuarts d'Albanie. Then, probably, one would reflect on the
characters of Mary and of Richard; Mary must have parents, of course, and
one would make them talk in Scottish. Probably she already had a lover;
how should she behave to that lover? There is plenty of room for
speculation in that problem. As to Dick, is he to be a Lothario, or a
lover _pour le bon motif_? What are his distinguished family to think of
the love affair, which would certainly ensue in fiction, though in real
life nobody thought of it at all? Are we to end happily, with a marriage
or marriages, or are we to wind all up in the pleasant, pessimistic,
realistic, fashionable modern way? Is Mary to drown the baby in the
Muckle Pool? Is she to suffer the penalty of her crime at Inverness? Or,
happy thought, shall we not make her discarded rival lover meet Dick in
the hills on a sunny day and then--are they not (taking a hint from
facts) to fight a duel with rifles? I see Dick lying, with a bullet in
his brow, on the side of a corrie; his blood crimsons the snow, an eagle
stoops from the sky. That makes a pretty picturesque conclusion to the
unwritten romance of the strath.

Another anecdote occurs to me; good, I think, for a short story, but
capable, also, of being dumped down in the middle of a long novel. It
was in the old coaching days. A Border squire was going north, in the
coach, alone. At a village he was join