hat sort of thing for you? I know you won't have a man secretary;
but there are lots of women now who can write shorthand and
typewrite. You could doubtless get one in the clan--someone with a
desire to better herself. I know you would make her happy here. If
she is not too young, all the better; she will have learned to hold
her tongue and mind her own business, and not be too inquisitive.
That would be a nuisance when we are finding our way about in a new
country and trying to reconcile all sorts of opposites in a whole new
country with new people, whom at first we shan't understand, and who
certainly won't understand us; where every man carries a gun with as
little thought of it as he has of buttons! Good-bye for a while.

Your loving
RUPERT.

_From Rupert Sent Leger_, _Vissarion_, _to Janet MacKelpie_, _Croom_.

_February_ 3, 1907.

I am back in my own room again. Already it seems to me that to get
here again is like coming home. I have been going about for the last
few days amongst the mountaineers and trying to make their
acquaintance. It is a tough job; and I can see that there will be
nothing but to stick to it. They are in reality the most primitive
people I ever met--the most fixed to their own ideas, which belong to
centuries back. I can understand now what people were like in
England--not in Queen Elizabeth's time, for that was civilized time,
but in the time of Coeur-de-Lion, or even earlier--and all the time
with the most absolute mastery of weapons of precision. Every man
carries a rifle--and knows how to use it, too. I do believe they
would rather go without their clothes than their guns if they had to
choose between them. They also carry a handjar, which used to be
their national weapon. It is a sort of heavy, straight cutlass, and
they are so expert with it as well as so strong that it is as facile
in the hands of a Blue Mountaineer as is a foil in the hands of a
Persian _maitre d'armes_. They are so proud and reserved that they
make one feel quite small, and an "outsider" as well. I can see
quite well that they rather resent my being here at all. It is not
personal, for when alone wit