ad thereof he scrambled along the ridge, and looked
through the trees as the carriage passed below; but he did not escape.

"What's he glowerin' at doon there?" Hillocks inquired of Jamie Soutar,
to whom he was giving some directions about a dyke, and Hillocks made a
reconnaissance. "A 'll warrant that's the General and his dochter.
She 's a weel-faured lassie an' speerity-lookin'."

"It cowes a'," said Jamie to himself; "the first day he ever saw her;
but it's aye the way, aince an' ever, or . . . never."

"What's the Free Kirk, dad?" when Carmichael had gone. "Is it the same
as the Methodists?"

"No, no, quite different. I 'm not up in those things, but I 've heard
it was a lot of fellows who would not obey the laws, and so they left
and made a kirk for themselves, where they do whatever they like. By
the way, that was the young fellow we saw giving the dogs water at
Muirtown. I rather like him; but why did he look such a fool, and try
to escape us at the junction?"

"How should I know? I suppose because he is a . . . foolish boy. And
now, dad, for the Lodge and Tochty woods."

CHAPTER III.

A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS.

It was the custom of the former time to construct roads on a straight
line, with a preference for uphill and down, and engineers refused to
make a circuit of twenty yards to secure level ground. There were two
advantages in this uncompromising principle of construction, and it may
be doubtful which commended itself most to the mind of our fathers.
Roads were drained after the simplest fashion, because a standing pool
in the hollow had more than a compensation in the dryness of the ascent
and descent, while the necessity of sliddering down one side and
scrambling up the other reduced driving to the safe average of four
miles an hour--horse-doctors forming a class by themselves, and being
preserved in their headlong career by the particular Providence which
has a genial regard for persons who have too little sense or have taken
too much liquor. Degenerate descendants, anxious to obtain the maximum
of speed with the minimum of exertion, have shown a quite wonderful
ingenuity in circumventing hills, so the road between Drumtochty Manse
and Tochty Lodge gate was duplicated, and the track that plunged into
the hollow was now forsaken of wheeled traffic and overgrown with grass.

"This way, Kate; it's the old road, and the way I came to kirk with my
mother. Yes, it's narrow, but we'l