f some day hearing a freeborn Scot say
"Auchterarder." The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat
holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn,
between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the
foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile
plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul
counts the ten hours' dust and heat but a slight price for the sight of
the Scottish Rhine flowing deep, clear, and swift by the foot of its
wooded hills, and the "Fair City" in the heart of her meadows.

"Do you see the last wreath of mist floating off the summit of the
hill, and the silver sheen of the river against the green of the woods?
Quick, dad," and the General, accustomed to obey, stood up beside Kate
for the brief glimpse between the tunnel and a prison. Yet they had
seen the snows of the Himalayas, and the great river that runs through
the plains of India. But it is so with Scottish folk that they may
have lived opposite the Jungfrau at Muerren, and walked among the big
trees of the Yosemite Valley, and watched the blood-red afterglow on
the Pyramids, and yet will value a sunset behind the Cuchullin hills,
and the Pass of the Trossachs, and the mist shot through with light on
the sides of Ben Nevis, and the Tay at Dunkeld--just above the
bridge--better guerdon for their eyes.

"Ay, lassie"--the other people had left at Stirling, and the General
fell back upon the past--"there 's just one bonnier river, and that's
the Tochty at a bend below the Lodge, as we shall see it, please God,
this evening."

"Tickets," broke in a voice with authority. "This is no the station,
an' ye 'll hae to wait till the first diveesion o' yir train is
emptied. Kildrummie? Ye change, of coorse, but yir branch 'll hae a
lang wait the day. It 'll be an awfu' fecht wi' the Hielant train.
Muirtown platform 'll be worth seein'; it 'll juist be michty," and the
collector departed, smacking his lips in prospect of the fray.

"Upon my word," said the General, taken aback for a moment by the easy
manners of his countryman, but rejoicing in every new assurance of
home, "our people are no blate."

"Is n't it delicious to be where character has not been worn smooth by
centuries of oppression, but where each man is himself? Conversation
has salt here, and tastes in the mouth. We 've just heard two men
speak this morning, and each face is bitten into my