“ Harry with dark suspicions of rats wherever he could find a hole in the wall of the barn; Maggie, under instruction of Duncan the ploughman, driving the two horses hauling a harrow over the rough red land; everywhere the birds singing; the young corn showing green; and then—just as the chance might be—Meenie coming along the road, her golden-brown hair blown by the wind, her eyes about as blue as Loch Naver's shining waters, and herself calling, with laughter and scolding, to Maggie to desist from that tomboy work. ”

“ Would he be the universal favourite that Ronald was—always good-natured and laughing, but managing everybody and everything; lending a hand at the sheep-shearing or playing the pipes at a wedding—anything to keep life moving along briskly; and always ready to give her father a day's hare-shooting or a turn at the pools of Mudal-Water when the spates began to clear? ”

“ This was not quite the same kind of a luncheon party as that he had attended on the shores of the far northern loch—with Miss Carry complacently regarding the silver-clear salmon lying on the smooth, dry greensward; and the American talking in his friendly fashion of the splendid future that lay before a capable and energetic young fellow in the great country beyond the seas; while all around them the sweet air was blowing, and the clear light shining, and the white clouds sailing high over the Clebrig slopes. ”

“ But here he was, day after day, week after week, chained to these dismal tasks; in solitude; with the far white dream of ambition becoming more and more distant and obscured; and with a terrible consciousness ever growing upon him that in coming away from even the mere neighbourhood of Meenie, from the briefest companionship with her, he had sacrificed the one beautiful thing, the one precious possession, that his life had ever held for him or would hold. What though the impalpable barrier of Glengask and Orosay rose between him and her? ”

“ M'Lachlan—a large, pompous-looking person, with a gray face and short-cropped white hair, whose cool stare of observation and lofty smile of patronage instantly made Ronald say to himself, 'My good friend, we shall have to put you into your proper place;' Mrs. M'Lachlan, an insignificant woman, dowdily dressed; and finally, Mr. Weems, a little, old, withered man, with a timid and appealing look coming from under bushy black eyebrows—though the rest of his hair was gray. ”

“ No; all such lyrical faculty as he possessed had been given in one direction. And yet not for one moment was he tempted to show Mr. Jaap any of those little love-lyrics that he had written about Meenie—those careless verses that seemed to sing themselves, as it were, and that were all about summer mornings, and red and white roses, and the carolling of birds, and the whispering of Clebrig's streams. Meenie's praises to be sung at the Harmony Club!—he could as soon have imagined herself singing there. ”

“ For well she knew of her mother's aims and hopes with regard to herself; and well she knew that—whatever she may have guessed from the verses of Ronald's which assuredly had never been meant for her to see—it was neither for him nor for her to expect that the harsh facts and necessities of the world should give place and yield to a passing fancy, a dream, a kind of wistful, half-poetic shadow of what otherwise might have been. But at least Ronald and she might part friends; nay, they should part friends. ”

“ However, after some further climbing, they reached certain drier altitudes; and there the hamper was deposited, while they looked out for such trunks or big stones as would make convenient seats. The old woman was speechless from exhaustion; Kate was laughing at her own breathlessness, or miscalling the place for having dirtied her boots and her skirts; while Ronald was bringing things together for their comfort, so that they could have their luncheon in peace. ”

“ A strange unrest and longing had seized him; a desire to be alone with the silence of the night; perhaps some angry impatience that he could not make out so much as a few trivial verses for this beautiful girl-friend whom he might never see again. He could write about his dream-sweetheart easily enough; and was there to be never a word for Meenie herself? So he walked down to the river; and wandered along the winding and marshy banks—startling many wildfowl the while—until he reached the lake. ”

“ Indeed it is a sore pity that Miss Carry Hodson, in a fit of temper, had crushed together and thrust into the bottom of the boat the newspaper containing an estimate of Ronald's little Highland poem; if only she had handed it on to him, he would have learned that the sentiment of nostalgia is too slender and fallacious a thing for any sensible person to bother his head about; and, instead of wasting his time in gazing at the front of a railway station, he would have gone resolutely back to Strachan's Agricultural Tables and the measuring and mapping of surface areas. ”

“ I'm no for having young folk waste the best years of their life, and find out how little use the rest o't's to them—no that I consider mysel' one o' the auld folk yet——'
'You, Katie dear!' whined old mother Paterson from her millinery corner. 'You—just in the prime o' youth, one micht say! you one o' the auld folk?—ay, in thirty years' time maybe!'
'Take my advice, Ronald, my lad,' said the widow boldly. 'Dinna slave away for naething—because folk have put fancy notions into your head. Have a better opinion o' yoursel'! ”

“ He had had no practice in singing to a piano. He would put the man out. Why should he not sing here—if sing he must—at the table where they were sitting? That was what he was used to; he had no skill in keeping correct time; he would only bother the accompanist, and bewilder himself.
'No, I'll tell ye what it is, Ronald, my lad,' his friend Jaap said to him. 'I'll play the accompaniment for ye, if ye pick out something I'm familiar wi'; and don't you heed me; you look after yourself. Even if ye change the key—and that's not likely—I'll look after ye. ”

“ The mail-cart had driven away for the south.
Nor even now did she go back to the cottage. She wandered away through the wild moorland wastes—hour after hour, and aimlessly; and when, by chance, a shepherd or crofter came along the road, she left the highway and went aside among the heather, pretending to seek for wild-flowers or the like: for sometimes, if not always, there was that in the beautiful, tender Highland eyes which she would have no stranger see. ”

“ By and by the fish began to show himself a little more amenable, and preparations were made for receiving him on shore. Miss Carry stepped back a few yards; her father got out of the way altogether; Ronald crouched down, clip in hand. Of course, when the salmon found himself being guided into the shallows, he was off like a bolt; and again and again he repeated these sullen rushes; but each time they were growing weaker; and at last, as the gleam of something white showed in the water, Ronald made a sudden plunge with the clip—and the salmon was ashore. ”

“ It was in his head now, as he rapidly and blindly walked away along the Cowcaddens, and along the New City Road, and along the Western Road—random rhymes, random verses, that the jolly company could sing together as the engine thundered along—
Out of the station we rattle away,
Wi' a clangour of axle and wheel;
There's a merrier sound that we knew in the north—
The merry, merry shriek of the reel!
O you that shouther the heavy iron gun,
And have steep, steep braes to speel—
We envy you not; enough is for us
The merry, merry shriek of the reel! ”

“ Were spent among the lasses, O.' Then there was silence. The skipper now opened the door; and, as they entered, Ronald found himself near the head of a long and loftily-ceilinged apartment, the atmosphere of which was of a pale blue cast, through the presence of much tobacco smoke. All down this long room were twin rows of small tables, at which little groups of friends or acquaintances sate—respectable looking men they seemed, many of them young fellows, more of them of middle age, and nearly all of them furnished with drinks and pipes or cigars. ”

“ The cottage he had left—the white front of it now palely clear in the distance—seemed a ghostly thing: a small, solitary, forsaken thing, in the midst of this vast amphitheatre of hills that stood in awful commune with the stars. On such a night the wide and vacant spaces can readily become peopled; phantoms issue from the shadows of the woods and grow white in the open; an unknown wind may arise, bringing with it strange singing from the northern seas. ”

“ It is the very place to make friends, and plenty of them—
'Oh, I don't know what to do—I don't know what to do, if you are not going to Glasgow, Meenie!' she broke in. 'I wonder if it was that that Ronald meant. He asked me whether I would like to stay here or go with him, for Mrs. Murray has offered to take me in, and I would have to help at keeping the books, and that is very kind of them, I am sure, for I did not think I could be of any use to anybody. And you are to be here in Inver-Mudal—and Ronald away in Glasgow——'
Well, it was a bewildering thing. ”

“ Now in Glasgow, for an establishment of this kind to be popular, it must have a side entrance—the more the merrier, indeed—by which people can get into the tavern without being seen; but besides this it soon appeared that Mrs. Menzies had a private right of way of her own. She bade Ronald follow her; she went through the archway; produced a key and opened a door; and then, passing along a short lobby, he found himself in what might be regarded as the back parlour of the public-house, but was in reality a private room reserved by Mrs. Menzies for herself and her intimate friends. ”

“ She was very merry; and laughed at his penitential scorn of himself; and was for spurring him on to further poetical efforts.
'East Lothian for ever!' she was saying, as they got away out by the north of the town. 'Didna I tell them? Ay, and ye've got to do something better yet, Ronald, my lad, than the "other glass before we go." You're no at that time o' life yet to talk as if everything had gone wrong; and the blue-eyed lass—what blue-eyed lass was it, I wonder, that passed ye by with but a stare? ”

“ Jaap nor the big skipper was anxious to quarrel with a controversialist who had such abundant stores of hospitality at her command. Moreover, Kate Menzies was in the habit of speaking her mind; was it not better, for the sake of peace and quietness, to yield a little? This cousin of hers from the Highlands could parade some book-learning it is true; and he had plenty of cut-and-dried theories that sounded plausible enough; and his apparent knowledge of the working of American institutions was sufficiently good for an argument—so long as one could not get at the real facts ”

“ But when Maggie rose to return home—saying that it was time for her to be looking after Ronald's supper—her friend seemed to pull herself together somewhat, and at once and cheerfully accepted Maggie's invitation to come and have tea with her the following afternoon.
'For you have been so little in to see us lately,' the small Maggie said; 'and Ronald always engaged with the American people—and often in the evening too as well as the whole day long.'
'But I must make a great deal of you now that you are going away,' said Miss Douglas, smiling. ”

“ And then when the bottle was brought and the glasses filled, she said—
'Here's your health, Ronald; and right glad am I to see you looking so weel—ye were aye a bonnie laddie, and ye've kept the promise o't—ay, indeed, the whole o' you Strangs were a handsome family—except your brother Andrew, maybe——'
'Do ye ever see Andrew?' Ronald said; for a modest man does not like to have his looks discussed, even in the most flattering way. ”

“ When they got ashore at the end of the day it was found that each boat had got two more salmon, so that there was a display of nine big fish on the grass there in the gathering dusk.
'And to think that I should live to catch five salmon in one day,' said Miss Carry, as she contemplated her share of the spoil. 'Well, no one will believe it; for they're just real mean people at home; and they won't allow that anything's happened to you in Europe unless you have something to show for it. I suppose Ronald would give me a written guarantee. ”

“ Menzies's tempestuous good nature; and then again he refused to confess anything of the kind; and quarrelled with himself for being so ungrateful. Why, the first bit of real, heartfelt friendliness that had been shown him since he came to this great city; and he was to examine it; and be doubtful; and wish that the keeper of a tavern should be a little more refined!
'Ronald lad,' he was saying to himself when he reached his lodging in the dusky Port Dundas Road, 'it's over-fed stomachs that wax proud. ”

“ And it sounded strange to Ronald to hear that he was still remembered away up there in the remote little hamlet.
On the morning of the day before the Twelfth his books did not get much attention. He kept going to the window to watch the arrivals at the railway station opposite, wondering whether this one or that was off and away to the wide moors and the hills. Then, about mid-day, he saw a young lad bring up four dogs—a brace of setters, a small spaniel, and a big brown retriever—and give them over in charge to a porter. Well, human nature could not stand this any longer. ”

“ And he would have such chances as no mere stranger could have, coming through on the mail-cart and asking everywhere for a little trout-fishing. Ronald would have a day or two's stalking from Lord Ailine; and there was the loch; and Mudal-Water; and if the gentlemen were after the grouse, would they not be glad to have an extra gun on the hill for a day or two, just to make up a bag for them?
'And then,' said Meenie, with a smile, 'who knows but that Ronald may in time be able to have a shooting of his own? ”

“ It is all their doing. It never would have come into Ronald's head to leave Inver-Mudal but for them. And where else will he be so well known—and—and every one speaking well of him—and every one so friendly——'
'But, Maggie, these things are always happening,' her companion remonstrated. 'Look at the changes my father has had to make.'
'And I wonder if we are never to come back to Inver-Mudal, Meenie?' the girl said suddenly, with appealing eyes.
Meenie tried to laugh, and said—
'Who can tell? It is the way of the world for people to come and go. ”

“ Since I've been to Europe I've come to see what's the trouble about our reading English history and literature at home; why, you can't do it, you can't understand it, unless you have lived in an atmosphere that is just full of poetry and romance, and meeting people whose names tell you they belong to the families who did great things in history centuries and centuries ago. ”