Chapter II: Part 2

Everything about a man is characteristic, more or less; and in the house of the Landlord I found that singular mixture of hemispheres which I had before noticed in his talk and in his way of looking at times. His house was plain enough externally, but its furniture was curious and far-brought. The interior of his porch was adorned with heads of stags and tusks of elephants. He would show you Highland relics, and curiosities from sacked Eastern palaces. He had the tiny porcelain cup out of which Prince Charles drank tea at Kingsburgh, and the signet ring which was stripped from the dead fingers of Tippoo Saib. In his gun-room were modern breech-loaders and revolvers, and matchlocks from China and Nepaul. On the walls were Lochaber axes, claymores, and targets that might have seen service at Inverlochy, hideous creases, Afghan daggers, curiously-curved swords, scabbards thickly crusted with gems. In the library the last new novel leaned against the "Institutes of Menu." On the drawing-room table, beside _carte-de-visite_ books, were ivory card-cases wrought by the patient Hindoo artificer as finely as we work our laces, Chinese puzzles that baffled all European comprehension, and comical squab-faced deities in silver and bronze. While the Landlord was absent, I could fancy these strangely-assorted articles striking one with a sense of incongruity: but when at home, each seemed a portion of himself. He was related as closely to the Indian god as to Prince Charles's cup. The ash and birch of the Highlands danced before his eyes, the palm stood in his imagination and memory.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's pets.]

And then he surrounded himself with all kinds of pets, and lived with them on the most intimate terms. When he entered the breakfast-room his terriers barked and frisked and jumped about him; his great black hare-hound, Maida, got up from the rug on which it had been basking and thrust its sharp nose into his hand; his canaries broke into emulous music, as if sunshine had come into the room; the parrot in the porch clambered along the cage with horny claws, settled itself on its perch, bobbed its head up and down for a moment, and was seized with hooping-cough. When he went out the black hare-hound followed at his heel; the peacock, strutting on the gravel in the shelter of the larches, unfurled its starry fan; in the stable his horses turned round to smell his clothes and to have their foreheads stroked: melodious thunder broke from the dog-kennel when he came: and at his approach his falcons did not withdraw haughtily, as if in human presence there was profanation; they listened to his voice, and a gentler something tamed for a moment the fierce cairngorms of their eyes. When others came near they ruffled their plumage and uttered sharp cries of anger.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's visitors.]

After breakfast it was his habit to carry the parrot out to a long iron garden-seat in front of the house--where, if sunshine was to be had at all, you were certain to find it--and placing the cage beside him, smoke a cheroot. The parrot would clamber about the cage, suspended head downwards would take crafty stock of you with an eye which had perhaps looked out on the world for a century or so, and then, righting itself, peremptorily insist that Polly should put on the kettle, and that the boy should shut up the grog. On one special morning, while the Landlord was smoking and the parrot whooping and whistling, several men, dressed in rough pilot cloth which had seen much service and known much darning, came along the walk and respectfully uncovered. Returning their salutation, the Landlord threw away the end of his cheroot and went forward to learn their message. The conversation was in Gaelic: slow and gradual at first, it quickened anon, and broke into gusts of altercation; and on these occasions I noticed that the Landlord would turn impatiently on his heel, march a pace or two back to the house, and then, wheeling round, return to the charge. He argued in the unknown tongue, gesticulated, was evidently impressing something on his auditors which they were unwilling to receive, for at intervals they would look in one another's faces,--a look plainly implying, "Did you ever hear the like?" and give utterance to a murmured chit, _chit, chit_ of dissent and humble protestation. At last the matter got itself amicably settled, the deputation--each man making a short sudden duck before putting on his bonnet--withdrew, and the Landlord came back to the parrot, which had, now with one eye, now with another, been watching the proceeding. He sat down with a slight air of annoyance.

"These fellows are wanting more meal," he said, "and one or two are pretty deep in my books already."

"Do you, then, keep regular accounts with them?"

"Of course. I give nothing for nothing. I wish to do them as much good as I can. They are a good deal like my old ryots, only the ryot was more supple and obsequious."

"Where do your friends come from?" I asked.

"From the village over there," pointing across the narrow blue loch. "Pretty Polly! Polly!"

The parrot was climbing up and down the cage, taking hold of the wires with beak and claw as it did so.

"I wish to know something of your villagers. The cotters on the hill-side seem comfortable enough, but I wish to know something of the black land and the lonely huts behind."

"Oh," said he, laughing, "that is my penal settlement--I'll drive you over to-morrow." He then got up, tossed a stone into the shrubbery, after which Maida dashed, thrust his hands into his breeches' pocket for a moment, and marched into the house.

[Sidenote: The Landlord's arrival.]

Next morning we drove across to the village, and pretty enough it looked as we alighted. The big water-wheel of the mill whirred industrious music, flour flying about the door and windows. Two or three people were standing at the merchant's shop. At the smithy a horse was haltered, and within were brilliant showers of sparks and the merry clink of hammers. The sunshine made pure amber the pools of the tumbling burn, and in one of these a girl was rinsing linen, the light touching her hair into a richer colour. Our arrival at the inn created some little stir. The dusty miller came out, the smith came to the door rubbing down his apron with a horny palm, the girl stood upright by the burn-side shading her eyes with her hand, one of the men at the merchant's shop went within to tell the news, the labourers in the fields round about stopped work to stare. The machine was no sooner put to rights and the horses taken round to the stable than the mistress of the house complained that the roof was leaky, and she and the Landlord went in to inspect the same. Left alone for a little, I could observe that, seeing my friend had arrived, the people were resolved to make some use of him, and here and there I noticed them laying down their crooked spades, and coming down towards the inn. One old woman, with a white handkerchief tied round her head, sat down on a stone opposite, and when the Landlord appeared--the matter of the leaky roof having been arranged--she rose and dropped a courtesy. She had a complaint to make, a benefit to ask, a wrong to be redressed. I could not, of course, understand a word of the conversation, but curiously sharp and querulous was her voice, with a slight suspicion of the whine of the mendicant in it, and every now and then she would give a deep sigh, and smooth down her apron with both her hands. I suspect the old lady gained her object, for when the Landlord cracked his joke at parting the most curious sunshine of merriment came into the withered features, lighting them up and changing them, and giving one, for a flying second, some idea of what she must have been in her middle age, perhaps in her early youth, when she as well as other girls had a sweetheart.

[Sidenote: The penal settlement.]

In turn we visited the merchant's shop, the smithy, and the mill; then we passed the schoolhouse--which was one confused murmur, the sharp voice of the teacher striking through at intervals--and turning up a narrow road, came upon the black region and the banished huts. The cultivated hill-side was shining in sunlight, the cottages smoking, the people at work in their crofts--everything looking blithe and pleasant; and under the bright sky and the happy weather the penal settlement did not look nearly so forbidding as it had done when, under the sunset, I had seen it a few evenings previously. The houses were rude, but they seemed sufficiently weather-tight. Each was set down in a little oasis of cultivation, a little circle in which by labour the sour land had been coaxed into a smile of green; each small domain was enclosed by a low turfen wall, and on the top of one of these a wild goat-looking sheep was feeding, which, as we approached, jumped down with an alarmed bleat, and then turned to gaze on the intruders. The land was sour and stony, the dwellings framed of the rudest materials, and the people--for they all came forward to meet him, and at each turfen wall the Landlord held a _levée_--especially the older people, gave one the idea somehow of worn-out tools. In some obscure way they reminded one of bent and warped oars, battered spades, blunted pickaxes. On every figure was written hard, unremitting toil. Toil had twisted their frames, seamed and puckered their leathern faces, made their hands horny, bleached their grizzled locks. Your fancy had to run back along years and years of labour before it could arrive at the original boy or girl. Still they were cheerful-looking after a sort, contented, and loquacious withal. The man took off his bonnet, the woman dropped her courtesy, before pouring into the Landlord's ear how the wall of the house wanted mending, how a neighbour's sheep had come into the corn, had been _driven_ into the corn out of foul spite and envy it was suspected, how new seed would be required for next year's sowing, how the six missing fleeces had been found in the hut of the old soldier across the river, and all the other items which made up their world. And the Landlord, his black hound couched at his feet, would sit down on a stone, or lean against the turf wall and listen to the whole of it, and consult as to the best way to repair the decaying house, and discover how defendant's sheep came into complainant's corn, and give judgment, and promise new seed to old Donald, and walk over to the soldier's and pluck the heart out of the mystery of the missing fleeces. And going in and out amongst his people, his functions were manifold. He was not Landlord only--he was leech, lawyer, divine. He prescribed medicine, he set broken bones, and tied up sprained ankles; he was umpire in a hundred petty quarrels, and damped out wherever he went every flame of wrath. Nor, when it was needed, was he without ghostly counsel. On his land he would permit no unbaptized child; if Donald was drunk and brawling at a fair, he would, when the inevitable headache and nausea were gone, drop in and improve the occasion, to Donald's much discomfiture and his many blushes; and with the bed-ridden woman, or the palsied man, who for years had sat in the corner of the hut as constantly as a statue sits within its niche--just where the motty sunbeam from the pane with its great knob of bottle-green struck him--he held serious conversations, and uttered words which come usually from the lips of a clergyman.

[Sidenote: The cottages on the hill-side.]

We then went through the cottages on the cultivated hill-side, and there another series of _levées_ were held. One cotter complained that his neighbour had taken advantage of him in this or the other matter: another man's good name had been aspersed by a scandalous tongue, and ample apology must be made, else the sufferer would bring the asperser before the sheriff. Norman had borrowed for a day Neil's plough, had broken the shaft, and when requested to make reparation, had refused in terms too opprobrious to be repeated. The man from Sleat who had a year or two ago come to reside in these parts, and with whom the world had gone prosperously, was minded at next fair to buy another cow--would he therefore be allowed to rent the croft which lay alongside the one which he already possessed? To these cotters the Landlord gave attentive ear, standing beside the turf dike, leaning against the walls of their houses, sitting down inside in the peat smoke--the children gathered together in the farthest corner, and regarding him with no little awe. And so he came to know all the affairs of his people--who was in debt, who was waging a doubtful battle with the world, who had money in the bank; and going daily amongst them he was continually engaged in warning, expostulation, encouragement, rebuke. Nor was he always sunshine: he was occasionally lightning too. The tropical tornado, which unroofs houses and splits trees, was within the possibilities of his moods as well as the soft wind which caresses the newly-yeaned lamb. Against greed, laziness, dishonesty, he flamed like a seven-times heated furnace. When he found that argument had no effect on the obstinate or the pig-headed, he suddenly changed his tactics, and descended in a shower of _chaff_, which is to the Gael an unknown and terrible power, dissolving opposition as salt dissolves a snail.

The last cotter had been seen, the last _levée_ had been held, and we then climbed up to the crown of the hill to visit the traces of an old fortification, or _dün_, as the Skye people call it. These ruins, and they are thickly scattered over the island, are supposed to be of immense antiquity--so old, that Ossian may have sung in each to a circle of Fingalian chiefs. When we reached the _dün_--a loose congregation of mighty stones, scattered in a circular form, with some rude remnants of an entrance and a covered way--we sat down, and the Landlord lighted a cheroot. Beneath lay the little village covered with smoke. Far away to the right, Skye stretched into ocean, pale headland after headland. In front, over a black wilderness of moor, rose the conical forms of Macleod's Tables, and one thought of the "restless bright Atlantic plain" beyond, the endless swell and shimmer of watery ridges, the clouds of sea birds, the sudden glistening upheaval of a whale and its disappearance, the smoky trail of a steamer on the horizon, the tacking of white-sailed craft. On the left, there was nothing but moory wilderness and hill, with something on a slope flashing in the sunshine like a diamond. A falcon palpitating in the intense blue above, the hare-hound cocked her ears and looked out alertly, the Landlord with his field-glass counted the sheep feeding on the hill-side a couple of miles off. Suddenly he closed the glass, and lay back on the heather, puffing a column of white smoke into the air.

"I suppose," said I, "your going in and out amongst your tenants to-day is very much the kind of thing you used to do in India?"

"Exactly. I know these fellows, every man of them--and they know me. We get on very well together. I know everything they do. I know all their secrets, all their family histories, everything they wish, and everything they fear. I think I have done them some good since I came amongst them."

"But," said I, "I wish you to explain to me your system of penal servitude, as you call it. In what respect do the people on the cultivated hillside differ from the people in the black ground behind the village?"

"Willingly. But I must premise that the giving away of money in charity is, in nine cases out often, tantamount to throwing money into the fire. It does no good to the bestower: it does absolute harm to the receiver. You see I have taken the management of these people into my own hands. I have built a school-house for them--on which we will look in and overhaul on our way down--I have built a shop, as you see, a smithy, and a mill. I have done everything for them, and I insist that, when a man becomes my tenant, he shall pay me rent. If I did not so insist I should be doing an injury to myself and to him. The people on the hill-side pay me rent; not a man Jack of them is at this moment one farthing in arrears. The people down there in the black land behind the village, which I am anxious to reclaim, don't pay rent. They are broken men, broken sometimes by their own fault and laziness, sometimes by culpable imprudence, sometimes by stress of circumstances. When I settle a man there I build him a house, make him a present of a bit of land, give him tools, should he require them, and set him to work. He has the entire control of all he can produce. He improves my land, and can, if he is industrious, make a comfortable living. I won't have a pauper on my place: the very sight of a pauper sickens me."

"But why do you call the black lands your penal settlement?"

Here the Landlord laughed. "Because, should any of the crofters on the hill-side, either from laziness or misconduct, fall into arrears, I transport him at once. I punish him by sending him among the people who pay no rent. It's like taking the stripes off a sergeant's arm and degrading him to the ranks; and if there is any spirit in the man he tries to regain his old position. I wish my people to respect themselves, and to hold poverty in horror."

"And do many get back to the hill-side again?"

"Oh, yes! and they are all the better for their temporary banishment. I don't wish residence there to be permanent in any case. When one of these fellows gets on, makes a little money, I have him up here at once among the rent-paying people. I draw the line at a cow."

"How?"

"When a man by industry or by self-denial has saved money enough to buy a cow, I consider the black land is no longer the place for him. He is able to pay rent, and he must pay it. I brought an old fellow up here the other week, and very unwilling he was to come. He had bought himself a cow, and so I marched him up here at once. I wish to stir all these fellows up, to put into them a little honest pride and self-respect."

"And how do they take to your system?"

"Oh, they grumbled a good deal at first, and thought their lines were hard; but discovering that my schemes have been for their benefit, they are content enough now. In these black lands, you observe, I not only rear corn and potatoes, I rear and train men, which is the most valuable crop of all. But let us be going. I wish you to see my scholars. I think I have got one or two smart lads down there."

[Sidenote: The school.]

In a short time we reached the school-house, a plain, substantial-looking building, standing mid-way between the inn and the banished huts. As it was arranged that neither schoolmaster nor scholar should have the slightest idea that they were to be visited that day, we were enabled to see the school in its ordinary aspect. When we entered the master came forward and shook hands with the Landlord, the boys pulled their red fore-locks, the girls dropped their best courtesies. Sitting down on a form I noted the bare walls, a large map hanging on one side, the stove with a heap of peats near it, the ink-smeared bench and the row of girls' heads, black, red, yellow, and brown, surmounting it, and the boys, barefooted and in tattered kilts, gathered near the window. The girls regarded us with a shy, curious gaze, which was not ungraceful; and in several of the freckled faces there was the rudiments of beauty, or of comeliness at least. The eyes of all, boys as well as girls, kept twinkling over our persons, taking silent note of everything. I don't think I ever before was the subject of so much curiosity. One was pricked all over by quick-glancing eyes as by pins. We had come to examine the school, and the ball opened by a display of copy books. Opening these, we found pages covered with "_Emulation is a generous passion,_" "_Emancipation does not make man,_" in very fair and legible handwriting. Expressing our satisfaction, the schoolmaster bowed low, and the prickling of the thirty or forty curious eyes became yet more keen and rapid. The schoolmaster then called for those who wished to be examined in geography--very much as a colonel might seek volunteers for a forlorn hope--and in a trice six scholars, kilted, of various ages and sizes, but all shock-headed and ardent, were drawn up in line in front of the large map. A ruler was placed in the hand of a little fellow at the end, who, with his eyes fixed on the schoolmaster and his body bent forward eagerly, seemed as waiting the signal to start off in a race. "Number one, point out river Tagus." Number one charged the Peninsula with his ruler as ardently as his great-grandfather in all probability charged the French at Quebec. "Through what country does the Tagus flow?" "Portugal." "What is the name of the capital city?" "Lisbon." Number one having accomplished his devoir, the ruler was handed on to number two, who traced the course of the Danube, and answered several questions thereanent with considerable intelligence. Number five was a little fellow; he was asked to point out Portree, and as the Western Islands hung too high in the north for him to reach, he jumped at them. He went into the North Sea the first time, but on his second attempt he smote Skye with his ruler very neatly. Numbers three, four, and six acquitted themselves creditably--number four boggling a little deal about Constantinople--much to the vexation of the schoolmaster. Slates were then produced, and the six geographers--who were the cream of the school, I daresay--were prepared for arithmetical action. As I was examiner, and had no desire to get into deep waters, the efforts of my kilted friends were, at my request, confined to the good old rule of simple addition. The schoolmaster called out ten or eleven ranks of figures, and then cried add. Six swishes of the slate-pencil were heard, and then began the arithmetical tug of war. Each face was immediately hidden behind a slate, and we could hear the quick tinkle of pencils. All at once there was a hurried swish, and the red-head, who had boggled about Constantinople, flashed round his slate on me with the summation fairly worked out. Flash went another slate, then another, till the six were held out. All the answers corresponded, and totting up the figures I found them correct. Then books were procured, and we listened to English reading. In a loud tone of voice, as if they were addressing some one on an opposite hill-side, and with barbarous intonation, the little fellows read off about a dozen sentences each. Now and again a big word brought a reader to grief, as a tall fence brings a steeple-chaser; now and again a reader went through a word as a hunter goes through a hedge which he cannot clear--but, on the whole, they deserved the commendation which they received. The Landlord expressed his satisfaction, and mentioned that he had left at the inn two baskets of gooseberries for the scholars. The schoolmaster again bowed; and although the eyes of the scholars were as bright and curious as before, they had laid their heads together, and were busily whispering now.

The schools in Skye bear the same relationship to the other educational establishments of the country that a turf-hut bears to a stone-and-lime cottage. These schools are scattered thinly up and down the Island, and the pupils are unable to attend steadily on account of the distances they have to travel, and the minor agricultural avocations in which they are at intervals engaged. The schoolmaster is usually a man of no surpassing intelligence or acquirement; he is wretchedly remunerated, and his educational aids and appliances, such as books, maps, &c., are defective. But still a turf-hut is better than no shelter, and a Skye school is better than no school at all. The school, for instance, which we had just visited, was an authentic light in the darkness. There boys and girls were taught reading, writing, and ciphering--plain and homely accomplishments it is true, but accomplishments that bear the keys of all the doors that lead to wealth and knowledge. The boy or girl who can read, write, and cast up accounts deftly, is not badly equipped for the battle of life; and although the school which the Landlord has established is plain and unostentatious in its forms and modes of instruction, it at least, with tolerable success, teaches these. For the uses made of them by the pupils in after life, the pupils are themselves responsible.

_ORBOST AND DUNVEGAN._

Punctually at nine next morning there was a grating of wheels on the gravel, and Malcolm and his dog-cart were at the door. After a little delay I took my place on the vehicle and we drove off. Malcolm was a thick-set, good-humoured, red haired and whiskered little fellow, who could be silent for half a day if needed, but who could speak, and speak to the point, too, when required. When driving, and especially when the chestnut mare exhibited any diminution of speed, he kept up a running fire of ejaculations. "Go on," he would say, as he shook the reins, for the whip he mercifully spared, "what are you thinking about?" "Hoots! chit, chit, chit! I'm ashamed of you!" "Now then. Hoots!" and these reproaches seemed to touch the mare's heart, for at every ejaculation she made a dash forward as if the whip had touched her.

[Sidenote: View from the dog-cart]

On the way from Grishornish to Dunvegan, about a couple of miles from the latter place, a road branches off to the right and runs away downward through the heathery waste; and about forty yards onward you come to a bridge spanning a gully, and into this gully three streams leap and become one, and then the sole stream flows also to the right with shallow fall and brawling rapid, the companion of the descending road. The road up to the bridge is steep, but it is steeper beyond, and at the bridge Malcolm jumped down and walked alongside with the reins in his hands. In the slow progression your eye naturally follows the road and the stream; and beyond the flank of a hill sloping gradually down to the purple gloom of undulating moorland, you catch a glimpse of a bit of blue sea, some white broken cliffs that drop down into it; and, leaning on these cliffs, a great green sunny strath, with a white dot of a house upon it. The glimpse of sea, and white cliffs, and stretch of sunny greenness is pleasant; the hill, which you have yet to climb, keeps the sun from you, and all around are low heathery eminences. You stare at the far-off sunlit greenness, and having satisfied yourself therewith, begin to examine the ground above and on either side of the bridge, and find it possessed of much pastoral richness and variety. The main portion is covered with heather, but near you there are clumps of ferns, and further back are soft banks and platforms of verdure on which kine might browse and ruminate, and which only require the gilding of sunshine to make them beautiful. "What bridge is this?" I asked of Malcolm, who was still trudging alongside with the reins in his hand. "The Fairy Bridge"--and then I was told that the fairy sits at sunset on the green knolls and platforms of pasture chirming and singing songs to the cows; and that when a traveller crosses the bridge, and toils up the hill, she is sure to accompany him. As this was our own course, I asked, "Is the fairy often seen now?" "Not often. It's the old people who know about her. The shepherds sometimes hear her singing when they are coming down the hill; and years ago, a pedlar was found lying across the road up there dead; and it was thought that the fairy had walked along with him. But, indeed, I never saw or heard her myself--only that is what the old people say." And so in a modern dog-cart you are slowly passing through one of the haunted places in Skye!

[Sidenote: The spoiling of the dikes.]

I fancy Malcolm must have seen that this kind of talk interested me. "Did you ever hear, sir, about the Battle of the Spoiling of the Dikes down at Trompon Kirk, yonder?" and he pointed with his whip to the yellow-green strath which broke down in cliffs to the sea.

I answered that I never had, and Malcolm's narrative flowed on at once.

"You see, sir, there was a feud between the Macdonalds of the Mainland and the Macleods of Trotternish; and one Sunday, when the Macleods were in church, the Macdonalds came at full of tide, unknown to any one, and fastened their boats to the arched rocks on the shore--for it's a strange coast down there, full of caves and natural bridges and arches. Well, after they had fastened their boats, they surrounded the church, secured the door, and set it on fire. Every one was burned that Sunday except one woman, who squeezed herself through a window--it was so narrow that she left one of her breasts behind her--and escaped carrying the news. She raised the country with her crying and the sight of her bloody clothes. The people--although it was Sunday--rose, men and women, and came down to the burning church, and there the battle began. The men of Macleod's country fought, and the women picked up the blunted arrows, sharpened them on the stones, and then gave them to the men. The Macdonalds were beaten at last, and made for their boats. But by this time it was ebb of tide; and what did they see but the boats in which they had come, and which they had fastened to the rocky arches, hanging in the air! Like an otter, when its retreat to the sea is cut off, the Macdonalds turned on the men of Macleod's country and fought till the last of them fell, and in the sheughs of the sand their blood was running down red into the sea. At that time the tide came further in than it does now, and the people had built a turf dike to keep it back from their crops. Then they took the bodies of the Macdonalds and laid them down side by side at the foot of the dike, and tumbled it over on the top of them. That was the way they were buried. And after they had tumbled the dike they were vexed, for they minded then that the sea might come in and destroy their crops. That's the reason that the battle is called the Battle of the Spoiled Dikes."

"The men of Macleod's country would regret the spoiling of the dikes, as Bruce the battle-axe with which, on the evening before Bannockburn, and in the seeing of both armies, he cracked the skull of the English knight who came charging down upon him."

[Sidenote: The Sciur of Eig.]

Undiverted by my remark, Malcolm went on, "Maybe, sir, you have seen the Sciur of Eig as you came past in the steamer?"

"Yes, and I know the story. The Macdonalds were cooped up in a cave, and the Macleods ranged over the island and could find no trace of them. They then in high dudgeon returned to their boats, meaning to depart next morning. There was a heavy fall of snow during the night, was there not? and just when the Macleods were about to sail, the figure of a man, who had come out to see if the invaders were gone, was discerned on the top of the Sciur, against the sky line. The Macleods returned, and by the foot-prints in the snow they tracked the man to his hiding-place. They then heaped up heath and what timber they could procure, at the mouth of the cave, applied fire, and suffocated all who had therein taken shelter. Is that not it?"

"The Macdonalds first burned the church at Trompon down there. The bones of the Macdonalds are lying in the cave to this day, they say. I should like to see them."

"But don't you think it was a dreadful revenge? Eig was one of the safe places of the Macdonalds; and the people in the cave were chiefly old men, women, and children. Don't you think it was a very barbarous act, Malcolm?"

"I don't know," said Malcolm; "I am a Macleod myself."

[Sidenote: Macleod's Tables.]

By the time I had heard the story of Lady Grange, who sleeps in the Trompon churchyard, we had toiled pretty well up the steep ascent. On our way we heard no fairy singing to the kine, nor did any unearthly figure accompany us. Perhaps the witchery of the setting sun was needed. By the time we reached the top of the hill the pyramidical forms of Macleod's Tables were distinctly visible, and then Malcolm took his seat beside me in the dog-cart.

Macleod's Tables, two hills as high as Arthur's Seat, flat at the top as any dining-table in the country--from which peculiar conformation indeed they draw their names--and covered deep into spring by a table-cloth of snow; Macleod's Maidens, three spires of rock rising sheer out of the sea, shaped like women, around whose feet the foamy wreaths are continually forming, fleeting, and disappearing--what magic in the names of rocky spire and flat-topped hill to him who bears the name of Macleod, and who can call them his own! What is modern wealth--association-less, without poetry, melting like snow in the hot hand of a spendthrift--compared to that old inheritance of land, which is patent to the eye, which bears your name, around which legends gather,--all vital to you as your great-grandmother's blue eyes and fair hair; as your great-grandfather's hot temper and the corrugation of his forehead when he frowned! These bold landmarks of family possession must be regarded with peculiar interest by the family. They make the white sheet on which you--a shadow of fifty years or thereby--are projected by the camera obscura of fate. The Tables and the Maidens remain for ever bearing your name, while you--the individual Macleod--are as transitory as the mist wreath of the morning which melts on the one, or the momentary shape of wind-blown foam which perishes on the base of the other. The value of these things is spiritual, and cannot be affected by the click of the auctioneer's hammer, or the running of the hour-glass sand on the lawyer's table after the title-deeds have been read and the bids are being made. Wealth is mighty, but it can no more buy these things than it can buy love, or reverence, or piety. Jones may buy the Tables and the Maidens, but they do not own him; he is for ever an alien: they wear the ancient name, they dream the ancient dream. When poverty has stripped your livery from all your servants, they remain faithful. When an Airlie is about to die, with tuck of drum, they say, a ghostly soldier marches round the castle. Rothschild, with all his millions, could not buy that drummer's services. What is the use of buying an estate to-day? It is never wholly yours; the old owner holds part possession with you. It is like marrying a widow; you hold her heart, but you hold it in partnership with the dead. I should rather be the plainest English yeoman whose family has been in possession of a farm since the Heptarchy than be the richest banker in Europe. The majority of men are like Arabs, their tents are pitched here to-night and struck to-morrow. Those families only who have held lands for centuries can claim an abiding home. In such families there is a noble sense of continuity, of the unbroken onflowing of life. The pictures and the furniture speak of forefather and foremother. Your ancestor's name is on your books, and you see the pencil marks which he has placed against the passages that pleased him. The necklace your daughter wears heaved on the breast of the ancestress from whom she draws her smile and her eyes. The rookery that caws to-night in the sober sunset cawed in the ears of the representative of your house some half-dozen generations back--the very same in every respect, 'tis the individual rooks only that have changed. The full-foliaged murmur of the woods shape your name, and yours only. As for these Macleods--

[Sidenote: The house at Orbost.]

"That's Orbost, sir, the house under the hill," said Malcolm, pointing with his whip, and obviously tired of the prolonged silence, "and yonder on the left are the Cuchullins. The sea is down there, but you cannot see it from this. We'll be there in half an hour," and exactly in half an hour, with Macleod's Tables behind us, we passed the garden and the offices, and alighted on the daisied sward before the house.

After I had wandered about for an hour I made up my mind that, had I the choice, I should rather live at Orbost than at any other house in Skye. And yet, at Orbost, the house itself is the only thing that can reasonably be objected to. In the first place, it is one of those elegant expressionless houses in the Italian style with which one is familiar in the suburban districts of large cities, and as such it is quite out of keeping with the scenery and the spiritual atmosphere of the island. It is too modern, and villa like. It is as innocent of a legend as Pall Mall. It does not believe in ghost stories. It has a dandified and sceptical look; and as it has not taken to the island, the island has not taken to it. Around it trees have not grown well; they are mere stunted trunks, bare, hoary, wind-writhen. There is not a lichen or discoloration on its smoothly-chiselled walls; not a single chimney or gable has been shrouded with affectionate ivy. It looks like a house which has "cut" the locality, and which the locality has "cut" in return. In the second place, the house is stupidly situated. It turns a cold shoulder on the grand broken coast; on the ten miles of sparkling sea on which the sun is showering millions of silver coins, ever a new shower as the last one disappears; on Rum, with a veil of haze on its highest peak; on the lyrical Cuchullins--for although of the rigidest granite, they always give one the idea of passion and tumult; on the wild headlands of Bracadale, fading one after another, dimmer and dimmer, into distance;--on all this the house turns a cold shoulder, and on a meadow on which some dozen colts are feeding, and on a low strip of moory hill beyond, from which the cotters draw their peats, it stares intently with all its doors and windows. Right about face. Attention! That done, the most fastidious could object to nothing at Orbost, on the point of beauty at least. The faces of the Skye people, continually set like flints against assaults of wind and rain, are all lined and puckered about the eyes; and in Skye houses you naturally wish to see something of the same weather-beaten look. Orbost, with its smooth front and unwinking windows, outrages the fitness of things.

Of the interior no one can complain; for on entering you are at once surrounded by a proper antiquity and venerableness. The dining-room is large and somewhat insufficiently lighted, and on the walls hang two of Raeburn's half-lengths--the possession of which are in themselves vouchers of a family's respectability--and several portraits of ladies with obsolete waists and head-dresses, and military gentlemen in the uniform of last century. The furniture is dark and massy; the mahogany drawing depth and colour from age and usage; the carpet has been worn so bare that the pattern has become nearly obliterated. The room was not tidy, I was pleased to see. A small table placed near the window was covered with a litter of papers; in one corner were guns and fishing-rods, and a fishing-basket laid near them on the floor; and the round dusty mirror above the mantelpiece--which had the curious faculty of reducing your size, so that in its depth you saw yourself as it were at a considerable distance--had spills of paper stuck between its gilded frame and the wall. From these spills of paper I concluded that the house was the abode of a bachelor who occasionally smoked after dinner--which, indeed, was the case, only the master of the house was from home at the time of my visit. In the drawing-room, across the lobby, hooped ladies of Queen Anne's time might have sat and drunk tea out of the tiniest china cups. The furniture was elegant, but it was the elegance of an ancient beau. The draperies were rich, but they had lost colour, like a spinster's cheek. In a corner stood a buffet with specimens of cracked china. Curious Indian ornaments, and a volume of Clarissa Harlowe, and another volume of the Poetical Works of Mr Alexander Pope--the binding faded, the paper dim--lay on the central table. Had the last reader left them there? They reminded me of the lute--it may be seen at this day in Pompeii--which the dancing girl flung down in an idle moment. In a dusky corner a piano stood open, but the ivory keys had grown yellow, and all richness of voice had been knocked out of them by the fingerings of dead girls. I touched them, and heard the metallic complaint of ill-usage, of old age, of utter loneliness and neglect. I thought of Ossian, and the flight of the dark-brown years. It was the first time they had spoken for long. The room, too, seemed to be pervaded by a scent of withered rose leaves, but whether this odour lived in the sense or the imagination, it would be useless to inquire.

[Sidenote: The garden at Orbost.]

Orbost lies pleasantly to the sun, and in the garden I could almost fancy Malvolio walking cross-gartered--so trim it was, so sunnily sedate, so formal, so ancient-looking. The shadow on the dial told the age of the day, clipped box-wood ran along every walk. Trees, crucified to the warm brick walls, stretched out long arms on which fruit was ripening. The bee had stuck his head so deeply into a rose that he could hardly get it out again, and so with the leaves--as a millionaire with bank-notes--he impatiently buzzed and fidgeted. And then you were not without sharp senses of contrast: out of the sunny warmth and floral odours you lifted your eyes, and there were Macleod's Tables rising in an atmosphere of fable; and up in the wind above you, turning now and again its head in alert outlook, skimmed a snow-white gull, weary--as tailors sometimes are with sitting--of dancing on the surges of the sea.

Orbost stands high above the sea, and if you wish thoroughly to enjoy yourself you must walk down the avenue to the stone seat placed on the road which winds along the brow of the broken cliffs, and which, by many a curve and bend, reaches the water level at about a quarter of a mile's distance, where there is a boat-house, and boats lying keel uppermost or sideways, and a stretch of yellow sand on which the tide is flowing, creamy line after creamy line. From where you sit the ground breaks down first in a wall of cliff, then in huge boulders as big as churches, thereafter in bushy broken ground with huts perched in the coziest places, each hut swathed in the loveliest films of blue smoke; and all through this broken ground there are narrow winding paths along which a cow is always being gingerly driven, or a wild Indian-looking girl is bringing water from some cool spring beneath. Here you can quietly enjoy the expanse of dazzling sea, a single sail breaking the restless scintillations; far Rum asleep on the silver floor; and, caught at a curious angle, the Cuchullin hills--reminding you of some stranded iceberg, splintered, riven, many-ridged, which the sun in all his centuries has been unable to melt. In the present light they have a curiously hoary look, and you can notice that in the higher corries there are long streaks of snow. [Sidenote: The glen at Orbost.] On the right, beyond the boat-house, a great hill, dappled with brown and olive like a seal's back, and traversed here and there by rocky terraces, breaks in precipices down to the sea line; and between it and the hill on which you are sitting, and which slopes upward behind, you see the beginning of a deep glen, in its softness and greenness suggesting images of pastoral peace, the bringing home of rich pails by milkmaids, the lowing of cattle in sober ruddy sunsets. "What glen is that, Malcolm?" "Oh, sir, it just belongs to the farm." "Is there a house in it?" "No, but there's the ruins of a dozen." "How's that?" "Ye see, the old Macleods liked to keep their cousins and second cousins about them; and so Captain Macleod lived at the mouth of the glen, and Major Macleod at the top of it, and Colonel Macleod over the hill yonder. If the last trumpet had been blown at the end of the French war, no one but a Macleod would have risen out of the churchyard at Dunvegan. If you want to see a chief now-a-days, you must go to London for him. Ay, sir, Dun Kenneth's prophecy has come to pass--'In the days of Norman, son of the third Norman, there will be a noise in the doors of the people, and wailing in the house of the widow; and Macleod will not have so many gentlemen of his name as will row a five-oared boat around the Maidens!' The prophecy has come to pass, and the Tables are no longer Macleod's--at least one of them is not."

After wandering about Orbost we resumed our seats in the dog-cart, and drove to Dunvegan Castle.

As we drew near Dunvegan we came down on one of those sinuous sea-lochs which--hardly broader than a river--flow far inland, and carry mysteriousness of sight and sound, the gliding sail, the sea-bird beating high against the wind, to the door of the shepherd, who is half a sailor among his bleating flocks. Across the sea, and almost within hail of your voice, a farm and outhouses looked embattled against the sky. Along the shore, as we drove, were boats and nets, and here and there little clumps and knots of houses. People were moving about on the roads intent on business. We passed a church, a merchant's store, a post-office; we were plainly approaching some village of importance; and on the right hand the chestnuts, larches, and ashes which filled every hollow, and covered every rolling slope, gave sufficient indication that we were approaching the castle.

[Sidenote: The garden at Dunvegan.]

In the centre of these woods we turned up a narrow road to the right along which ran a wall, and stopped at a narrow postern door. Here Malcolm rang a bell--the modern convenience grating somewhat on my preconceived notions of an approach to the old keep; if he had blown a horn I daresay I should have felt better satisfied--and in due time we were admitted by a trim damsel. The bell was bad, but the brilliant garden into which we stepped was worse--soft level lawns, a huge star of geraniums, surrounded at proper distances by half-moons and crescents of calceolarias rimmed with lobelias. The garden was circled by a large wall, against which fruit-trees were trained. In thinking of Dunvegan my mind had unconsciously become filled with desolate and Ossianic images, piled and hoary rocks, the thistle waving its beard in the wind, flakes of sea spray flying over all--and behold I rang a bell as if I were in Regent Street, and by a neat damsel was admitted into a garden that would have done no discredit to Kensington! After passing through the garden we entered upon a space of wild woodland, containing some fine timber, and romance began to revive. Malcolm then led me to an outhouse, and pointed out a carved stone above the doorway, on which were quartered the arms of the Macleods and Macdonalds. "Look there," said he, "Macleod has built the stone into his barn which should have been above his fire-place in his dining-room."

"I see the bull's head of Macleod and the galley of Macdonald--were the families in any way connected?"

"Oftener by a bloody dirk than by a gold marriage ring. But with all their quarrellings they intermarried more than once. Dunvegan was originally a stronghold of the Macdonald."

"Indeed! and how did the Macleods get possession?"

[Sidenote: The sinking of the barge.]

"I'll tell you that," said Malcolm. "Macdonald of Dunvegan had no son, but his only daughter was married to Macleod of Harris, and a young chief was growing up in Macleod's castle. The Macdonalds, knowing that when the old man was dead, they would have no one to lead them to battle, were pondering whom they should elect as chief; and, at the same time, Macleod's lady was just as anxiously pondering by what means her son should sit in Dunvegan. Well, while all this thinking and scheming was going on secretly in Skye and Harris, Macdonald, wishing to visit Macleod, ordered his barge and rowers to be in readiness, and pushed off. Macleod, hearing that his father-in-law was coming, went out in his barge to meet him half-way, and to escort him to his castle with all honour. Macleod's barge was bigger and stronger than Macdonald's, and held a greater number of rowers; and while his men were pulling, the chief sat in the stern steering, and his wife sat by his side. When they got into mid-channel a heavy mist came down, but still the men pulled, and still Macleod steered. All at once Macleod found that he was running straight on his father-in-law's barge, and just when he had his hand on the helm to change the course and avoid striking, his wife gripped him hard and whispered in his ear, 'Macleod, Macleod, there's only that barge betwixt you and Dunvegan.' Macleod took the hint, steered straight on, struck and sunk Macdonald's barge in the mist, and sailed for Dunvegan, which he claimed in the name of his son. That is the way, as the old people tell, that Macleod came into possession here."

Then we strolled along the undulating paths, and at a sudden turn there was the ancient keep on its rock, a stream brawling down close at hand, the tide far withdrawn, the long shore heaped with dulse and tangle, and the sea-mews above the flag-staff, as the jackdaws fly above the cathedral towers in England. It was gray as the rock on which it stood--there were dark tapestries of ivy on the walls, but at a first glance it was disappointingly modern-looking. I thought of the mighty shell of Tantallon looking towards the Bass, and waving a matted beard of lichens in the sea wind, and began to draw disadvantageous comparisons. The feeling was foolishness, and on a better acquaintance with the building it wore off. Dunvegan is inhabited, and you cannot have well-aired sheets, a well-cooked dinner, and the venerableness of ruin. Comfort and decay are never companions.

[Sidenote: Dunvegan.]