our worn-out looks brought out
milk in place of water--so with that, and hips and haws, we came in
little the worse."

His father was not at all pleased with his long absence, and asked how
he had managed with so little money.

"Pretty much like the ravens," said the boy. "I only wished I had been
as good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in 'The Vicar of
Wakefield.' If I had his art, I should like nothing better than to tramp
like him from cottage to cottage over the world."

"I doubt," said the father, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae
better than a scapegoat."

It may be that as a result of these chance expeditions Walter's father
finally came to realize that the boy might be made use of in certain
legal business that required sending messengers into the Highlands. Soon
he was sent with some legal papers to the Maclarens, who lived in that
beautiful lake country about Loch Lomond which Scott was later to make
famous in "The Lady of the Lake." It was the first time he had been in
that country, and the changing panorama unrolled before his eyes like a
land of dreams.

It happened that Walter was traveling in the company of a sergeant and
six men from a Highland regiment stationed in Sterling, and so he
journeyed quite like some ancient chieftain, with a front and rear
guard, and bearing arms. The sergeant was a thorough Highlander, full of
stories of Rob Roy and of his own early adventures, and an excellent
companion. The trip was a great success, and fired Walter's desires to
see more of a country which even then was only half-civilized.

A little later he had another chance, being sent north to visit another
of his father's clients, an old Jacobite who had fought in the uprisings
of 1715 and 1745. Paul Jones was then threatening a descent on the
Scotch coast, and Walter had the satisfaction of seeing the old Jacobite
chief making ready to bear arms again, and heard him exult at the
prospect of drawing claymore once more before he died. The boy was so
delighted at the stories the old man told that the latter invited him to
visit him that fall, and so he spent his holiday with him.

Riding northward on this visit the vale of Perth first burst on his
view. Long afterward he described the tremendous impression this sight
made upon him. "I recollect pulling up the reins," he wrote later,
"without meaning to do so, and gazing on the scene before me as if I had
been afraid it would shift, lik