farm; for the
father himself found employment enough in acting as a sort of humble
factor for the proprietor of the Barony, who lived at a distance, and
had no dwelling upon the land. The younger was a mason and slater, and
was usually employed, in the working seasons, at a distance; but in
winter, and, on this occasion, for a few weeks during the visit of his
brother the merchant, he resided with his father. Both were men of
marked individuality of character. The elder, Hugh, was an ingenious,
self-taught mechanic, who used in the long winter evenings to fashion a
number of curious little articles by the fireside--among the rest,
Highland snuff-mulls, with which he supplied all his friends; and he was
at this time engaged in building for his father a Highland barn, and, to
vary the work, fabricating for him a Highland plough. The younger,
George, who had wrought for a few years at his trade in the south of
Scotland, was a great reader, wrote very tolerable prose, and verse
which, if not poetry, to which he made no pretensions, was at least
quaintly-turned rhyme. He had, besides, a competent knowledge of
geometry, and was skilled in architectural drawing; and--strange
accomplishment for a Celt--he was an adept in the noble science of
self-defence. But George never sought out quarrels; and such was his
amount of bone and muscle, and such the expression of manly resolution
stamped on his countenance, that they never came in his way unsought.

At the close of the day, when the members of the household had assembled
in a wide circle round the fire, my uncle "took the Book," and I
witnessed, for the first time, family-worship conducted in Gaelic.
There was, I found, an interesting peculiarity in one portion of the
services which he conducted. He was, as I have said, an elderly man, and
had worshipped in his family ere Dr. Stewart's Gaelic translation of the
Scriptures had been introduced into the county; and as he possessed in
those days only the English Bible, while his domestics understood only
Gaelic, he had to acquire the art, not uncommon in Sutherland at the
time, of translating the English chapter for them, as he read, into
their native tongue; and this he had learned to do with such ready
fluency, that no one could have guessed it to be other than a Gaelic
work from which he was reading. Nor had the introduction of Dr.
Stewart's translation rendered the practice obsolete in his household.
His Gaelic was _Sutherlandsh