, Colin, she did; I'm not denying."

"She'll be bedded long syne, no doubt, father?"

My father looked at me and gulped at the throat.

"Bedded indeed, poor Colin," said he, "this very day in the clods of
Kilmalieu!"

And that was my melancholy home-coming to my father's house of Elngmore,
in the parish of Glcnaora, in the shire of Argile.

CHAPTER II.--GILLESBEG GRUAMACH.

Every land, every glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiar
air or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle about
in his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like the
scent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in
Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encouraging to me. Even when
a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school,
the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the late
afternoon went to my head like a mild white wine; very heartsome too,
rousing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, before, over-apt to sit
and dream of the doing of grand things instead of putting out a hand to
do them. In Glascow the one thing that I had to grumble most about next
to the dreary hours of schooling was the clammy air of street and close;
in Germanie it was worse, a moist weakening windiness full of foreign
smells, and I've seen me that I could gaily march a handful of leagues
to get a sniff of the salt sea. Not that I was one who craved for wrack
and bilge at my nose all the time. What I think best is a stance inland
from the salt water, where the mountain air, brushing over gall and
heather, takes the sting from the sea air, and the two blended give
a notion of the fine variousness of life. We had a herdsman once in
Elrigmore, who could tell five miles up the glen when the tide was out
on Loch Firme. I was never so keen-scented as that, but when I awakened
next day in a camceiled room in Elrigmore, and put my head out at the
window to look around, I smelt the heather for a second like an escapade
in a dream.

Down to Ealan Eagal I went for a plunge in the linn in the old style,
and the airs of Shira Glen hung about me like friends and lovers, so
well acquaint and jovial.

Shira Glen, Shira Glen! if I was bard I'd have songs to sing to it, and
all I know is one sculduddry verse on a widow that dwelt in Maam! There,
at the foot of my father's house, were the winding river, and north and
south the brown hills, split asunder by God