n the air, and other
outlandish feats that added a great deal to the enjoyment, but very
little to the competence, of the assembled cooks.

Scotty joined the army of workers in the shanty, but he had left the
blue vision seated at the table between his grandparents, and his
culinary efforts were not much more successful than Dan's. His chum
tried to rally him on his absent looks, and made a sly allusion to the
effusive greeting of the young lady from Lake Oro. But Scotty met his
well-meant raillery with such unwonted ferocity that he very promptly
subsided.

In the new house, where the elder guests were gathered about the table,
affairs were much more ceremonious, for all the genteel folk the
neighbourhood could boast were there, and Jimmie's face shone with
pride as he glanced down the splendid array.

The bridegroom's joy seemed to permeate the whole feast. There was
much talk and laughter, and, among the elder women, a wonderful clatter
of Gaelic. For only on such rare occasions as this had they a chance
to meet, and there were many lengthy recountings of sicknesses, deaths,
and burials.

Long Lauchie, as usual, was full of vague and ominous prophecies. His
remarks were chiefly concerning the wedding feast to which those who
were bidden refused to come, with dark reference to the man who had not
on the wedding garment; neither of which allusions, surely, pointed to
either Weaver Jimmie or his marriage festivities. Near him, in a
little circle where English was spoken, Praying Donald and the minister
were leading a discussion on the evidences of Christianity. There was
only one quarter in which there were signs of anything but perfect
amity, and that was where a heated argument had arisen between Old
Farquhar and Peter Sandy Johnstone upon the respective merits of Ossian
and Burns; a discussion which, in spite of the age of the disputants,
would certainly have ended in blows, had it been in the old days when a
marriage was scarcely considered binding without a liberal supply of
whiskey.

But Kirsty's wedding, happily, belonged to the new era, and the
minister, glancing round the well conducted assemblage and recalling
the days, not so far past, when most of the Highlanders enlivened any
and every social function, from a barn-raising to a burial, with
spirits, heaved a great sigh of gratitude. And Store Thompson
unconsciously voiced his sentiments when he declared, in a neatly
turned little speech, that