d no one can say. An action for assault and
battery would have been the English way; a selection of slugs and
tenpenny nails over the hedge might possibly have been the Irish way;
but what actually happened in this law-abiding strath was quite
different.

In this parish of Glen Conquhar there was a minister, as there is a
minister in every parish in broad Scotland. He was very happy. He had a
cow or two of his own on the glebe, and part of it he let to the master
of the hotel.

The Reverend Donald Grant of Glen Conquhar was an old man now, but,
though a little bowed, he was still strong and hearty, and well able for
his meal of meat. He lived high up on the hill, whose heathery sides
looked down upon the kirk and riverside glebe. His simplicity of heart
and excellence of character endeared him to his parish, as indeed was
afterwards inscribed upon enduring marble on the tablet which was placed
under the list of benefactions in the little kirk of the strath.

The minister did not often come down from his Mount of the Wide
Prospects; and when he did, it was for some definite purpose, which
being performed, he straightway returned to his hill-nest.

He had heard nothing of the great Glen Conquhar right-of-way case, when
one fine morning he made his way down to the hamlet to see one of his
scanty flock, whose church attendance had not been all that could be
desired. As he went down the hill he passed within a few feet of the
newly painted trespass notice-board; but it was not till his return,
with slow steps, a little weary with the uphill road and the heat of the
day, that his eyes rested on the glaring white notice. Still more slowly
and deliberately he got his glasses out of their shagreen case, mounted
their massive silver rims on his nose, and slowly read the legend which
intimated that "_Trespassers on this Private Road will be Prosecuted
with the utmost Rigour of the Law_."

Having got to the large BY ORDER at the end, he calmly dismounted the
benignant silver spectacles, returned them to the shagreen case, and so
to the tail-pocket of his black coat. Then, still more benignantly, he
sought about among the roots of the trees till he found the stout branch
of a fir broken off in some spring gale, but still tough and
able-bodied. With an energy which could hardly have been expected from
one of his hoar hairs, the minister climbed part way up the pole, and
dealt the obnoxious board such hearty thwacks, first on one