for use that day. Whether that bridge was really
built by Marshall Wade in his great work of pacifying the Highlands is
very far from certain, but Drumtochty did not relish any trifling with
its traditions, and had a wonderful pride in its solitary bridge, as
well it might, since from the Beeches nothing could well be more
picturesque. Its plan came nearly to an inverted V, and the apex was
just long enough to allow the horses to rest after the ascent, before
they precipitated themselves down the other side. During that time the
driver leant on the ledge, and let his eye run down the river, taking
in the Parish Kirk above and settling on the Lodge, just able to be
seen among the trees where the Tochty below turned round the bend.
What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you
might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis. The bridge
stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising,
unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch
and abrupt descents. One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see
the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up,
before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up
the stream. Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the
Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the
veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a
little child. And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver,
and at last is seen no more from the beeches. From the Tochty the eye
makes its raids on north and south. The dark, massy pine-woods on the
left side of the glen are broken at intervals by fields as they
threaten to come down upon the river, and their shelter lends an air of
comfort and warmth to the glen. On the right the sloping land is
tilled from the bank above the river up to the edge of the moor that
swells in green and purple to the foot of the northern rampart of
mountains, but on this side also the glen here and there breaks into
belts of fir, which fling their kindly arms round the scattered
farm-houses, and break up the monotony of green and gold with squares
of dark green foliage and the brown of the tall, bare trunks. Between
the meandering stream and the cultivated land and the woods and the
heather and the distant hills, there was such a variety as cannot be
often gathered into the compass of one landscape.

[Illustration: Among the