the blood. May I
offer an anecdote?"

"Six, if you have got so many, and they are all about Highlanders," and
Kate leant forward and nursed her knee, for they had gone into the
library.

"Last week I was passing the cattle market in Edinburgh, and a big
Highland drover stopped me, begging for a little money.

"'It iss from Lochaber I hef come with some beasties, and to-morrow I
will be walking back all the way, and it iss this night I hef no bed.
I wass considering that the gardens would be a good place for a night,
but they are telling me that the police will be disturbing me.'

"He looked so simple and honest that I gave him half-a-crown and said
that I was half a Highlander. I have three Gaelic sentences, and I
reeled them off with my best accent.

"'Got forgive me,' he said, 'for thinking you to be a Sassenach body,
and taking your money from you. You are a fery well-made man, and here
iss your silver piece, and may you always hef one in your pocket.'"

[Illustration: "Here is your silver piece."]

"'But what about your bed?'

"'Tuts, tuts, that will be all right, for I hef maybe got some six or
five notes of my own that were profit on the beasties; but it iss a
pity not to be taking anything that iss handy when a body happens to be
in the south.'"

"Capital." Kate laughed merrily, and her too rare laugh I used to
think the gayest I ever heard. "It was the only opportunity left him
of following his fathers. What a fine business it must have been,
starting from Braemar one afternoon, a dozen men well armed, and
getting down to Strathmore in the morning; then lying hid in some wood
all day, and collecting a herd of fat cattle in the evening, and
driving them up Glen Shee, not knowing when there might be a fight."

"Hard lines on the Scottish farmers, Kit, who might be very decent
fellows, to lose their cattle or get a cut from a broadsword."

"Oh, they had plenty left; and seriously, dad, without joking, you
know, what better could a Presbyterian Lowlander do than raise good
beef for Highland gentlemen? Mr. Carmichael, I beg pardon; you seem so
good a Celt, that I forgot you were not of our faith."

"We are not Catholics," the General explained, gravely, "although many
of our blood have been, and my daughter was educated in a convent. We
belong to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and will go into Muirtown
at a time, but mostly we shall attend the kirk of my old friend Dr.
Davidson. Every man i