's goodness, to give a
sample of His bounty. Maam, Elrigmore and Elrigbeg, Kilblaan and Ben
Bhuidhe--their steep sides hung with cattle, and below crowded the
reeking homes of tacksman and cottar; the bums poured hurriedly to the
flat beneath their borders of hazel and ash; to the south, the fresh
water we call Dubh Loch, flapping with ducks and fringed with shelisters
or water-flags and bulrush, and farther off the Cowal hills; to
the north, the wood of Drimlee and the wild pass the red Macgregors
sometimes took for a back-road to our cattle-folds in cloud of night
and darkness. Down on it all shone the polished and hearty sun, birds
chinned on every tree, though it was late in the year; blackcock whirred
across the alders, and sturdy heifers bellowed tunefully, knee-deep at
the ford.

"Far have I wandered," thought I to myself, "warring other folk's wars
for the humour of it and small wages, but here's the one place I've seen
yet that was worth hacking good steel for in earnest!"

But still my heart was sore for mother, and sore, too, for the tale of
changed times in Campbell country my father told me over a breakfast of
braddan, fresh caught in a creel from the Gearron river, oaten bannock,
and cream.

After breakfast I got me into my kilt for town. There are many costumes
going about the world, but, with allowance for every one, I make bold
to think our own tartan duds the gallantest of them all. The kilt was my
wear when first I went to Glascow College, and many a St Mungo keelie,
no better than myself at classes or at English language, made fun of
my brown knees, sometimes not to the advantage of his headpiece when
it came to argument and neifs on the Fleshers' Haugh. Pulling on my old
_breacan_ this morning in Elrigmore was like donning a fairy garb, and
getting back ten years of youth. We have a way of belting on the kilt
in real Argile I have seen nowhere else. Ordinarily, our lads take the
whole web of tartan cloth, of twenty ells or more, and coil it once
round their middle, there belting it, and bring the free end up on the
shoulder to pin with a brooch--not a bad fashion for display and
long marches and for sleeping out on the hill with, but somewhat
discommodious for warm weather. It was our plan sometimes to make what
we called a philabeg, or little kilt, maybe eight yards long, gathered
in at the haunch and hung in many pleats behind, the plain brat part in
front decked off with a leather sporran, tag