mbitious Pharisees who scrambled for chief seats. Their accent
showed of what blood they both were, and that their Gaelic had still
been mercifully left them, but they did not use it because of their
perfect breeding, which taught them not to speak a foreign tongue in
this place. So the people saw Donald offer her a hymn-book and heard
her reply:

"It iss not a book that I will be using, and it will be a peety to take
it from other people;" nor would she stand at the singing, but sat very
rigid and with closed lips. When Carmichael, who had a pleasant tenor
voice and a good ear, sang a solo, then much tasted in such meetings,
she arose and left the place, and the minister thought he had never
seen anything more uncompromising than her pale set face.

[Illustration: Carmichael sang a solo.]

It was evident that she was Free Kirk and of the Highland persuasion,
which was once over-praised and then has been over-blamed, but is never
understood by the Lowland mind; and as Carmichael found that she had
come to live in a cottage at the entrance to the Lodge, he looked in on
his way home. She was sitting at a table reading the Bible, and her
face was more hostile than in the meeting; but she received him with
much politeness, dusting a chair and praying him to be seated. "You
have just come to the district to reside, I think? I hope you will
like our Glen."

"It wass here that I lived long ago, but I hef been married and away
with my mistress many years, and there are not many that will know me."

"But you are not of Drumtochty blood?" inquired the minister.

"There iss not one drop of Sassenach blood in my veins"--this with a
sudden flash. "I am a Macpherson and my husband wass a Macpherson; but
we hef served the house of Carnegie for four generations."

"You are a widow, I think, Mrs. Macpherson?" and Carmichael's voice
took a tone of sympathy. "Have you any children?"

"My husband iss dead, and I had one son, and he iss dead also; that iss
all, and I am alone;" but in her voice there was no weakening.

"Will you let me say how sorry I am?" pleaded Carmichael, "this is a
great grief, but I hope you have consolations."

"Yes, I will be having many consolations; they both died like brave men
with their face to the enemy. There were six that did not feel fery
well before Ian fell; he could do good work with the sword as well as
the bayonet, and he wass not bad with the dirk at a time."

Neither this woman n