tland.

With this future coronet glittering before his eyes, Fergus plunged
deeply into the correspondence and plots of that unhappy period; and,
like all such active agents, easily reconciled his conscience to going
certain lengths in the service of his party, from which honour and pride
would have deterred him had his sole object been the direct advancement
of his own personal interest. With this insight into a bold, ambitious,
and ardent, yet artful and politic character, we resume the broken thread
of our narrative.

The chief and his guest had by this time reached the house of
Glennaquoich, which consisted of Ian nan Chaistel's mansion, a high
rude-looking square tower, with the addition of a lofted house, that is,
a building of two stories, constructed by Fergus's grandfather when he
returned from that memorable expedition, well remembered by the western
shires under the name of the Highland Host. Upon occasion of this crusade
against the Ayrshire Whigs and Covenanters, the Vich Ian Vohr of the time
had probably been as successful as his predecessor was in harrying
Northumberland, and therefore left to his posterity a rival edifice as a
monument of his magnificence.

Around the house, which stood on an eminence in the midst of a narrow
Highland valley, there appeared none of that attention to convenience,
far less to ornament and decoration, which usually surrounds a
gentleman's habitation. An inclosure or two, divided by dry-stone walls,
were the only part of the domain that was fenced; as to the rest, the
narrow slips of level ground which lay by the side of the brook exhibited
a scanty crop of barley, liable to constant depredations from the herds
of wild ponies and black cattle that grazed upon the adjacent hills.
These ever and anon made an incursion upon the arable ground, which was
repelled by the loud, uncouth, and dissonant shouts of half a dozen
Highland swains, all running as if they had been mad, and every one
hallooing a half-starved dog to the rescue of the forage. At a little
distance up the glen was a small and stunted wood of birch; the hills
were high and heathy, but without any variety of surface; so that the
whole view was wild and desolate rather than grand and solitary. Yet,
such as it was, no genuine descendant of Ian nan Chaistel would have
changed the domain for Stow or Blenheim.

There was a sight, however, before the gate, which perhaps would have
afforded the first owner of Blenheim