olar. French he could
speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would
drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have
thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I
have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him.
Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by
reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a
fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl about the dear Northland they
both loved and then would suddenly remember that his pistols needed
cleaning or that, he had promised to "crack" with some chance gentleman
stopping at the inn, and away he would go, leaving us two alone. While I
lay on the grass and looked at her Aileen would tell me in her eager,
impulsive way about her own kindly country, of tinkling, murmuring burns,
of hills burnt red with the heather, of a hundred wild flowers that
blossomed on the braes of Raasay, and as she talked of them her blue eyes
sparkled like the sun-kissed lochs themselves.

Ah! Those were the good days, when the wine of life was creeping back into
my blood and I was falling forty fathoms deep in love. Despite myself she
was for making a hero of me, and my leal-hearted friend, Macdonald, was
not a whit behind, though the droll look in his eyes suggested sometimes
an ulterior motive. We talked of many things, but in the end we always got
back to the one subject that burned like a flame in their hearts--the
rising of the clans that was to bring back the Stuarts to their own. Their
pure zeal shamed my cold English caution. I found myself growing keen for
the arbitrament of battle.

No earthly Paradise endures forever. Into those days of peace the serpent
of my Eden projected his sting. We were all sitting in the grove one
morning when a rider dashed up to the inn and flung himself from his
horse. 'Twas Tony Creagh, and he carried with him a placard which offered
a reward of a hundred guineas for the arrest of one Kenneth Montagu,
Esquire, who had, with other parties unknown, on the night of July first,
robbed Sir Robert Volney of certain jewelry therein described.

"Highwayman it says," quoth I in frowning perplexity. "But Volney knows I
had no mind to rob him. Zounds! What does he mean?"

"Mean? Why, to get rid of you! I tore this down from a tavern wall in
London just after 'twas pasted. It seems you forgot to return the
gen