re
the Act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, I could
shoot? Ay, could I!" cries he, and then with a leer: "If ye had such a
thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show ye how it's done."

I told him I had nothing of the sort, and gave him a wider berth. If
he had known, his pistol stuck at that time quite plainly out of his
pocket, and I could see the sun twinkle on the steel of the butt. But
by the better luck for me, he knew nothing, thought all was covered, and
lied on in the dark.

He then began to question me cunningly, where I came from, whether I
was rich, whether I could change a five-shilling piece for him (which
he declared he had that moment in his sporran), and all the time he kept
edging up to me and I avoiding him. We were now upon a sort of green
cattle-track which crossed the hills towards Torosay, and we kept
changing sides upon that like ancers in a reel. I had so plainly the
upper-hand that my spirits rose, and indeed I took a pleasure in this
game of blindman's buff; but the catechist grew angrier and angrier,
and at last began to swear in Gaelic and to strike for my legs with his
staff.

Then I told him that, sure enough, I had a pistol in my pocket as well
as he, and if he did not strike across the hill due south I would even
blow his brains out.

He became at once very polite, and after trying to soften me for some
time, but quite in vain, he cursed me once more in Gaelic and took
himself off. I watched him striding along, through bog and brier,
tapping with his stick, until he turned the end of a hill and
disappeared in the next hollow. Then I struck on again for Torosay, much
better pleased to be alone than to travel with that man of learning.
This was an unlucky day; and these two, of whom I had just rid myself,
one after the other, were the two worst men I met with in the Highlands.

At Torosay, on the Sound of Mull and looking over to the mainland
of Morven, there was an inn with an innkeeper, who was a Maclean, it
appeared, of a very high family; for to keep an inn is thought even more
genteel in the Highlands than it is with us, perhaps as partaking of
hospitality, or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken. He spoke
good English, and finding me to be something of a scholar, tried me
first in French, where he easily beat me, and then in the Latin, in
which I don't know which of us did best. This pleasant rivalry put us at
once upon friendly terms; and I