my opinion."

"Sir Robert Sibbald holds mine."

"Innes is with me!" vociferated Oldbuck.

"Riston has no doubt!" shouted the Baronet.

"Truly, gentlemen," said Lovel, "before you muster your forces and
overwhelm me with authorities, I should like to know the word in
dispute."

"Benval" said both the disputants at once.

"Which signifies caput valli," said Sir Arthur.

"The head of the wall," echoed Oldbuck.

There was a deep pause.--"It is rather a narrow foundation to build a
hypothesis upon," observed the arbiter.

"Not a whit, not a whit," said Oldbuck; "men fight best in a narrow
ring--an inch is as good as a mile for a home-thrust."

"It is decidedly Celtic," said the Baronet; "every hill in the Highlands
begins with Ben."

"But what say you to Val, Sir Arthur; is it not decidedly the Saxon
wall?"

"It is the Roman vallum," said Sir Arthur;--"the Picts borrowed that part
of the word."

"No such thing; if they borrowed anything, it must have been your Ben,
which they might have from the neighbouring Britons of Strath Cluyd."

"The Piks, or Picts," said Lovel, "must have been singularly poor in
dialect, since, in the only remaining word of their vocabulary, and that
consisting only of two syllables, they have been confessedly obliged to
borrow one of them from another language; and, methinks, gentlemen, with
submission, the controversy is not unlike that which the two knights
fought, concerning the shield that had one side white and the other
black. Each of you claim one-half of the word, and seem to resign the
other. But what strikes me most, is the poverty of the language which
has left such slight vestiges behind it."

"You are in an error," said Sir Arthur; "it was a copious language,
and they were a great and powerful people; built two steeples--one at
Brechin, one at Abernethy. The Pictish maidens of the blood-royal were
kept in Edinburgh Castle, thence called Castrum Puellarum."

"A childish legend," said Oldbuck, "invented to give consequence to
trumpery womankind. It was called the Maiden Castle, quasi lucus a non
lucendo, because it resisted every attack, and women never do."

"There is a list of the Pictish kings," persisted Sir Arthur, "well
authenticated from Crentheminachcryme (the date of whose reign is
somewhat uncertain) down to Drusterstone, whose death concluded their
dynasty. Half of them have the Celtic patronymic Mac prefixed--Mac,
id est filius;--what do you say to that, M