his Grace is governor just now. It is always entrusted to
the best man in Scotland."

"And does the Duke live on that high rock, then?" demanded Jeanie.

"No, no, he has his deputy-governor, who commands in his absence; he
lives in the white house you see at the bottom of the rock--His Grace
does not reside there himself."

"I think not, indeed," said the dairy-woman, upon whose mind the road,
since they had left Dumfries, had made no very favourable impression,
"for if he did, he might go whistle for a dairy-woman, an he were the
only duke in England. I did not leave my place and my friends to come
down to see cows starve to death upon hills as they be at that pig-stye
of Elfinfoot, as you call it, Mr. Archibald, or to be perched upon the
top of a rock, like a squirrel in his cage, hung out of a three pair of
stairs' window."

Inwardly chuckling that these symptoms of recalcitration had not taken
place until the fair malcontent was, as he mentally termed it, under his
thumb, Archibald coolly replied, "That the hills were none of his making,
nor did he know how to mend them; but as to lodging, they would soon be
in a house of the Duke's in a very pleasant island called Roseneath,
where they went to wait for shipping to take them to Inverary, and would
meet the company with whom Jeanie was to return to Edinburgh."

"An island?" said Jeanie, who, in the course of her various and
adventurous travels, had never quitted terra firma, "then I am doubting
we maun gang in ane of these boats; they look unco sma', and the waves
are something rough, and"

"Mr. Archibald," said Mrs. Dutton, "I will not consent to it; I was never
engaed to leave the country, and I desire you will bid the boys drive
round the other way to the Duke's house."

"There is a safe pinnace belonging to his Grace, ma'am, close by,"
replied Archibald, "and you need be under no apprehensions whatsoever."

"But I am under apprehensions," said the damsel; "and I insist upon going
round by land, Mr. Archibald, were it ten miles about."

"I am sorry I cannot oblige you, madam, as Roseneath happens to be an
island."

"If it were ten islands," said the incensed dame, "that's no reason why I
should be drowned in going over the seas to it."

"No reason why you should be drowned certainly, ma'am," answered the
unmoved groom of the chambers, "but an admirable good one why you cannot
proceed to it by land." And, fixed his master's mandates to perform, he
poi