hen tendered by a
Highlander completely armed. There was, accordingly, a good deal of
formality in our approach and reception.

The Highlanders, who had been dispersed on the side of the hill, drew
themselves together when we came in view, and, standing firm and
motionless, appeared in close column behind three figures, whom I soon
recognised to be Helen MacGregor and her two sons. MacGregor himself
arranged his attendants in the rear, and, requesting Mr. Jarvie to
dismount where the ascent became steep, advanced slowly, marshalling us
forward at the head of the troop. As we advanced, we heard the wild notes
of the bagpipes, which lost their natural discord from being mingled with
the dashing sound of the cascade. When we came close, the wife of
MacGregor came forward to meet us. Her dress was studiously arranged in a
more feminine taste than it had been on the preceding day, but her
features wore the same lofty, unbending, and resolute character; and as
she folded my friend the Bailie in an unexpected and apparently unwelcome
embrace, I could perceive by the agitation of his wig, his back, and the
calves of his legs, that he felt much like to one who feels himself
suddenly in the gripe of a she-bear, without being able to distinguish
whether the animal is in kindness or in wrath.

"Kinsman," she said, "you are welcome--and you, too, stranger," she
added, releasing my alarmed companion, who instinctively drew back and
settled his wig, and addressing herself to me--"you also are welcome. You
came," she added, "to our unhappy country, when our bloods were chafed,
and our hands were red. Excuse the rudeness that gave you a rough
welcome, and lay it upon the evil times, and not upon us." All this was
said with the manners of a princess, and in the tone and style of a
court. Nor was there the least tincture of that vulgarity, which we
naturally attach to the Lowland Scottish. There was a strong provincial
accentuation, but, otherwise, the language rendered by Helen MacGregor,
out of the native and poetical Gaelic, into English, which she had
acquired as we do learned tongues, but had probably never heard applied
to the mean purposes of ordinary life, was graceful, flowing, and
declamatory. Her husband, who had in his time played many parts, used a
much less elevated and emphatic dialect;--but even _his_ language rose in
purity of expression, as you may have remarked, if I have been accurate
in recording it, when the affairs