"I've a mind to tell you a rather queer
experience of mine. It's nothing against your people generally, you
know, nor do I fancy it's even an American type; so you won't mind my
speaking of it. I've got some property in Scotland,--rather poor stuff
you'd call it,--but, by Jove! some Americans have been laying claim
to it under some obscure plea of relationship. There might have been
something in it, although not all they claim, but my business man, a
clever chap up in your place,--perhaps you may have heard of him,
Sir James MacFen,--wrote to me that what they really wanted were some
ancestral lands with the right to use the family name and privileges.
The oddest part of the affair was that the claimant was an impossible
sort of lunatic, and the whole thing was run by a syndicate of shrewd
Western men. As I don't care for the property, which has only been
dropping a lot of money every year for upkeep and litigation, Sir James,
who is an awfully far-sighted chap at managing, thought he could effect
a compromise, and get rid of the property at a fair valuation. And,
by Jove! he did. But what your countrymen can get out of it,--for
the shooting isn't half as good as what they can get in their own
country,--or what use the privileges are to them, I can't fancy."

"I think I know the story," said the consul, eying his fellow-guest
attentively; "but if I remember rightly, the young man claimed to be the
rightful and only surviving heir."

The Englishman rose, and, bending over the hearth, slowly knocked the
ashes from his pipe. "That's quite impossible, don't you know. For," he
added, as he stood up in front of the fire in face, figure, and careless
repose more decidedly English than ever, "you see my title of Duncaster
only came to me through an uncle, but I am the direct and sole heir of
the old family, and the Scotch property. I don't perhaps look like a
Scot,--we've been settled in England some time,--but," he continued
with an invincible English drawling deliberation,

"I--am--really--you--know--what they call The McHulish."

AN EPISODE OF WEST WOODLANDS.

I.

The rain was dripping monotonously from the scant eaves of the little
church of the Sidon Brethren at West Woodlands. Hewn out of the very
heart of a thicket of buckeye spruce and alder, unsunned and unblown
upon by any wind, it was so green and unseasoned in its solitude that it
seemed a part of the arboreal growth, and on damp Sundays to have
ta