r rest till they had gained or we were all ruined.

"Has it ever struck you, Mr. Carmichael, that one of the differences
between a Highlander and a Scot is that each has got a pet enjoyment?
With the one it's a feud, and with the other it's a lawsuit. A Scot
dearly loves a 'ganging plea.'

"No, no; Tochty woods will be open so long as Kate and I have anything
to say in the matter. The Glen and our people have not had the same
politics, but we 've lived at peace, as neighbours ought to do, with
never a lawsuit even to give a fillip to life."

"So you see, Mr. Carmichael," said Kate, "you may come and go at all
times through our territory; but it would be bare courtesy to call at
the Lodge for afternoon tea."

"Or tiffin," suggested the General; "and we can always offer curry, as
you see. My daughter has a capital recipe she wiled out of an old
Hindoo rascal that cooked for our mess. You really need not take it on
that account," as Carmichael was doing his best in much misery; "it is
only meant to keep old Indians in fair humour--not to be a test of good
manners. By the way, Janet has been sounding your praises, how have
you won her heart?"

"Oh, very easily--by having some drops of Highland blood in my veins;
and so I am forgiven all my faults, and am credited with all sorts of
excellences."

"Then the Highlanders are as clannish as ever," cried the General.
"Scotland has changed so much in the last half century that the
Highlanders might have become quite unsentimental and matter-of-fact.

"Lowland civilisation only crossed the Highland line after '45, and it
will take more than a hundred and thirty years to recast a Celt.
Scottish education and theology are only a veneer on him, and below he
has all his old instincts.

"So far as I can make out, a Celt will rather fish than plough, and be
a gamekeeper than a workman; but if he be free to follow his own way, a
genuine Highlander would rather be a soldier than anything else under
the sun."

"What better could a man be?" and Kate's eyes sparkled; "they must envy
the old times when their fathers raided the Lowlands and came home with
the booty. It's a pity everybody is so respectable now, don't you
think?"

"Certainly the police are very meddlesome," and Carmichael now devoted
himself to Kate, without pretence of including the General; "but the
spirit is not dead. A Celt is the child of generations of
cattle-stealers, and the raiding spirit is still in