were on good terms with all. For your man
of family the Gael has ever some regard. M'Iver (not to speak of myself)
was so manifestly the _duine-uasail_ that the coarsest of the company
fell into a polite tone, helped to their manners to some degree no doubt
by the example of Montrose and Airlie, who at the earliest moments of
our progress walked beside us and discoursed on letters and hunting, and
soldiering in the foreign wars.

The pass of Corryarick met us with a girning face and white fangs. On
Tarf-side there was a rough bridle-path that the wind swept the snow
from, and our progress was fairly easy. Here the drifts lay waist high,
the horses plunged to the belly-bands, the footmen pushed through in
a sweat. It was like some Hyperborean hell, and we the doomed wretches
sentenced to our eternity of toil. We had to climb up the shoulder of
the hill, now among tremendous rocks, now through water unfrozen, now
upon wind-swept ice, but the snow--the snow--the heartless snow was our
constant companion. It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts round
us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain. Unlucky were they who
wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze,
while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose
among the felt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joints was
unmarred.

It was long beyond noon when we reached the head of the pass, and
saw before us the dip of the valley of the Spey. We were lost in a
wilderness of mountain-peaks; the bens started about us on every
hand like the horrors of a nightmare, every ben with its death-sheet,
menacing us, poor insects, crawling in our pain across the landscape.

I thought we had earned a halt and a bite of meat by this forenoon of
labour; and Montrose himself, who had walked the pass on foot like his
fellows, seemed anxious to rest, but Sir Alasdair pushed us on like a
fate relentless.

"On, on," he cried, waving his long arms to the prospect before; "here's
but the start of our journey; far is the way before; strike fast, strike
hot! Would ye eat a meal with appetite while the Diarmaids wait in the
way?"

M'iver, who was plodding beside MacDonald when he said these words, gave
a laugh. "Take your time, Sir Sandy," said he; "you'll need a bowl or
two of brose ere you come to grips with MacCailein."

"Well never come to grips with MacCailein," said MacDonald, taking the
badinage in good part, "so long as he has