e at my best, and my best
is my rarest But come, come, we are not going into Inneraora on a
debate-parade; let us change the subject Do you know I'm like a boy with
a sweet-cake in this entrance to our native place. I would like not to
gulp down the experience all at once like a glutton, but to nibble round
the edges of it We'll take the highway by the shoulder of Creag Dubh,
and let the loch slip into our view."

I readily enough fell in with a plan that took us a bit off our way, for
I was in a glow of eagerness and apprehension. My passion to come home
was as great as on the night I rode up from Skipness after my seven
years of war, even greater perhaps, for I was returning to a home now
full of more problems than then. The restitution of my father's house
was to be set about, six months of hard stint were perhaps to be faced
by my people, and, above all, I had to find out how it stood between a
certain lady and me.

Coming this way from Lochow, the traveller will get his first sight of
the waters of Loch Finne by standing on a stone that lies upon a little
knowe above his lordship's stables. It is a spot, they say, Argile
himself had a keen relish for, and after a day of chasing the deer among
the hills and woods, sometimes would he come and stand there and look
with satisfaction on his country. For he could see the fat, rich fields
of his policies there, and the tumultuous sea that swarms with fish,
and to his left he could witness Glenaora and all the piled-up numerous
mountains that are full of story if not of crop. To this little knowe
M'Iver and I made our way. I would have rushed on it with a boy's
impetuousness, but he stopped me with a hand on the sleeve.

"Canny, canny," said he, "let us get the very best of it There's a cloud
on the sun that'll make Finne as cold, flat, and dead as lead; wait till
it passes."

We waited but a second or two, and then the sun shot out above us, and
we stepped on the hillock and we looked, with our bonnets in our hands.

Loch Finne stretched out before us, a spread of twinkling silver waves
that searched into the curves of a myriad bays; it was dotted with
skiffs. And the yellow light of the early year gilded the remotest hills
of Ardno and Ben Ime, and the Old Man Mountain lifted his ancient rimy
chin, still merrily defiant, to the sky. The parks had a greener hue
than any we had seen to the north; the town revealed but its higher
chimneys and the gable of the kirk, sti