irred me by saying, when the
Red Coats still garrisoned the Castle of Braemar and the Castle of
Corgarff, old Grampian strongholds where they had been installed to
overawe the Jacobites of the Aberdeenshire Highlands.

The "Seventeen-Forty-Five," with the "Standard on the Braes o'
Mar . . . up and streamin' rarely" for Bonnie Prince Charlie, saw fiery
times in those remote parts, and knew times of dule afterwards, and the
difficulty about any authentic tale of events, is that, in its passage
down time, from mouth to mouth, it necessarily loses immediacy of
phrase, even of fable, and that rude frame of living and loving,
fighting and dying, in which it was originally set. But human nature
does not change, we only think it does in changed circumstances, and if
Jock Farquharson, of Inverey, could return from the Hills of Beyond and
read our chronicle of himself and others, why, he might recognize it,
which would mean, perhaps, that some of the romantic colour, the
dancing atmosphere, and the high spirit of adventure of those ancient
years, has been saved from them. It was little he did not know about
the gallantries and the intrigues of war-making and love-making,
holding them the natural occupations of a Highland gentleman, even when
he had become a "broken man" and an "outlaw"; as you may now, if you
please, go on to learn, with many other things of surprise, diversion
and quality.

J. M.

THE CALEDONIAN CLUB,
LONDON,
_Midsummer Day_, 1921.

THE BLACK COLONEL

_I--We Meet in the Pass_

We might have gone by each other in
the Pass, the Black Colonel and
I, if his horse had not kicked a
stone as we came together. It
struck my foot and then a rock, making a rattle
in the dark night. You know how noise gains
when you cannot see the cause of it, and all
your senses are in your ears.

"Woa, Mack!" said the Black Colonel to
his beast; "can't you stand still with those
mettlesome legs of yours? You may," he went
on, more to himself than to the horse, "need
them to-night, for our friend, Captain Ian
Gordon of his Hanoverian Majesty's forces, is
late, and when a man is late it generally bodes
trouble; for a woman anyhow, I might confess
from my experience. It is less matter if a
woman be late, because it is a fashion with the
sweet sex that you should wait upon it, and
I am always willing to oblige out of my own
warmth in gallantry, or so folk say. Eh!
Mack? Kept you waiting at many a gate,