smug and
self-complacent before me, and though I loved the man I felt bound to
prick a hole in his conceit.

But at that moment a dead branch snapped in a little plantation that lay
by the way, and we turned quickly to see come to us a tall lean man in
MacDonald clothing.

CHAPTER XVIII.--BARD OF KEPPOCH.

He was a lantern-jawed, sallow-faced, high-browed fellow in his prime,
with the merest hint of a hirple or halt in his walk, very shabby in his
dress, wearing no sporran, but with a dagger bobbing about at his groin.
I have never seen a man with surprise more sharply stamped on his visage
than was betrayed by this one when he got close upon us and found two of
a clan so unlikely to have stray members out for a careless airing on a
forenoon in Badenoch.

"You're taking your walk?" he said, with a bantering tone, after a
moment's pause.

"You couldn't have guessed better," said John. "We are taking all we're
likely to get in so barren a country."

The stranger chuckled sourly as the three of us stood in a group
surveying each other. "My name," said he, in his odd north Gaelic, and
throwing out his narrow chest, "is John MacDonad I'm Keppoch's bard, and
I've no doubt you have heard many of my songs. I'm namely in the world
for the best songs wit ever strung together. Are you for war? I can stir
you with a stave to set your sinews straining. Are you for the music of
the wood? The thrush itself would be jealous of my note. Are you for the
ditty of the lover? Here's the songster to break hearts. Since the start
of time there have been 'prentices at my trade: I have challenged North
and East, South and the isle-flecked sea, and they cry me back their
master."

M'Iver put a toe on one of mine, and said he, "Amn't I the unlucky man,
for I never heard of you?"

"Tut, tut," cried the bard in a fret, "perhaps you think so much in
Argile of your hedge-chanters that you give the lark of the air no ear."

"We have so many poets between Knapdale and Cruachan," said John, "that
the business is fallen out of repute, and men brag when they can make an
honest living at prose."

"Honest living," said the bard, "would be the last thing I would expect
Clan Campbell to brag of."

He was still in an annoyance at the set-back to his vanity, shuffling
his feet restlessly on the ground, and ill at ease about the mouth,
that I've noticed is the first feature to show a wound to the conceit.

"Come, come," he went on, "will y