ravine on to the side of the mountain, and
then down by another path through the woods to the back of the house.
As they went he relapsed into his usual silence, and the conversation
was kept up between the other two. At a point not very far from the
castle,--just so far that one could see by the break of the ground
where the castle stood, Kennedy left them. "Mr. Finn will take you
back in safety, I am sure," said he, "and, as I am here, I'll go up
to the farm for a moment. If I don't show myself now and again when I
am here, they think I'm indifferent about the 'bestials'."

"Now, Mr. Kennedy," said Lady Laura, "you are going to pretend to
understand all about sheep and oxen." Mr. Kennedy, owning that it
was so, went away to his farm, and Phineas with Lady Laura returned
towards the house. "I think, upon the whole," said Lady Laura, "that
that is as good a man as I know."

"I should think he is an idle one," said Phineas.

"I doubt that. He is, perhaps, neither zealous nor active. But he is
thoughtful and high-principled, and has a method and a purpose in the
use which he makes of his money. And you see that he has poetry in
his nature too, if you get him upon the right string. How fond he is
of the scenery of this place!"

"Any man would be fond of that. I'm ashamed to say that it almost
makes me envy him. I certainly never have wished to be Mr. Robert
Kennedy in London, but I should like to be the Laird of Loughlinter."

"'Laird of Linn and Laird of Linter,--Here in summer, gone in
winter.' There is some ballad about the old lairds; but that belongs
to a time when Mr. Kennedy had not been heard of, when some branch of
the Mackenzies lived down at that wretched old tower which you see as
you first come upon the lake. When old Mr. Kennedy bought it there
were hardly a hundred acres on the property under cultivation."

"And it belonged to the Mackenzies."

"Yes;--to the Mackenzie of Linn, as he was called. It was Mr.
Kennedy, the old man, who was first called Loughlinter. That is
Linn Castle, and they lived there for hundreds of years. But these
Highlanders, with all that is said of their family pride, have
forgotten the Mackenzies already, and are quite proud of their rich
landlord."

"That is unpoetical," said Phineas.

"Yes;--but then poetry is so usually false. I doubt whether Scotland
would not have been as prosaic a country as any under the sun but for
Walter Scott;--and I have no doubt that Henry V owe