ilized
creature was as frightened of me as I was of it. My shyness and fear of
its strangeness made us both dumb. No doubt I seemed like a new breed of
inoffensive little barbarian, knowing no tongue but its own.

A certain clannish etiquette made it seem necessary that a relation
should pay me a visit sometimes, because I was in a way important. The
huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon its battlemented rock was
mine; I was a great heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess
of the clan. But I was a plain, undersized little child, and had no
attraction for any one but Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took
care of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of the library, and who was
a distant relative also. They were both like me in the fact that they
were not given to speech; but sometimes we talked to one another, and I
knew they were fond of me, as I was fond of them. They were really all I
had.

When I was a little girl I did not, of course, understand that I was
an important person, and I could not have realized the significance of
being an heiress. I had always lived in the castle, and was used to its
hugeness, of which I only knew corners. Until I was seven years old,
I think, I imagined all but very poor people lived in castles and were
saluted by every one they passed. It seemed probable that all little
girls had a piper who strode up and down the terrace and played on the
bagpipes when guests were served in the dining-hall.

My piper's name was Feargus, and in time I found out that the guests
from London could not endure the noise he made when he marched to and
fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading like a stag on a hillside.
It was an insult to tell him to stop playing, because it was his
religion to believe that The Muircarrie must be piped proudly to;
and his ancestors had been pipers to the head of the clan for five
generations. It was his duty to march round the dining-hall and play
while the guests feasted, but I was obliged in the end to make him
believe that he could be heard better from the terrace--because when he
was outside his music was not spoiled by the sound of talking. It was
very difficult, at first. But because I was his chieftainess, and had
learned how to give orders in a rather proud, stern little voice, he
knew he must obey.

Even this kind of thing may show that my life was a peculiar one; but
the strangest part of it was that, while I was at the head of so many
pe