glass for glass with
whisky and kept the company in a roar with Deeside stories. Old
Saunders--I remember him like yesterday--was not a mere drunken sot or a
Boniface of the hostelry. He had lived a long lifetime among men who did
not care to be toadied, and there was a freedom and ready wit in the old
man that pleased everybody who was worth pleasing. Above all, there was
the Deeside humour which made his stories popular, and brought them to
the ear of our Dean.

That was the left side--the Crathes bank of Dee. Across the river was
the somewhat dilapidated fortalice of Tilquhillie, the seat of an
ancient and decayed branch of the Douglases. The last laird who dwelt
there lived in the traditions of Deeside as own brother to the Laird of
Ellangowan in Scott's romance. Ramsay has put him well on canvas. Who
does not remember his dying instructions to his son and his grieve?--"Be
ye aye stickin' in a tree, Johnny; it will be growin' when ye are
sleepin'!" while he cautions the grieve, "Now mind that black park; it
never gied me onything, ne'er gie onything to it."

In the days when the Dean knew that Water-side the fortalice was
uninhabited, and I think not habitable for gentlefolks; but down on the
haugh below, and close to the river in a pretty garden-cottage, dwelt
the old Lady Tilquhillie, with her son the sheriff of the county, George
Douglas, whom a few Edinburgh men may yet remember as the man of wit and
pleasure about town, the _beau_ of the Parliament House--at home a kind
hospitable gentleman, looking down a little upon the rough humours that
pleased his neighbours. The old lady--I think she was a Dutch woman, or
from the Cape of Good Hope--and her old servant, Sandy M'Canch,
furnished the Dean with many a bit of Deeside life and humour; and are
they not written in the _Reminiscences!_

Higher up the river were two houses where the Dean was much
beloved--Banchory Lodge, his uncle General Burnett's, where also lived
his dear aunt, the widowed Mrs. Forbes; and Blackhall, where, in the
time I have in my mind, lived his aunt, Mrs. Russell, the widow of my
uncle Francis Russell, a woman of many sorrows, but whose sweet voice
and silver laugh brought joy into the house even amidst sickness and
sorrow[8]. She had not the Deeside language, but she and her sister Lady
Ramsay, Yorkshire women, and educated in the city of York, helped to
give the Dean that curious northern English talk which he mixed
pleasantly with the