diality itself as he held out the muscular hand, which the other evidently had expected.
"And so you're here, are you, Mr Ross, instead of upon Funachan; and this is the way you've been looking after the deer in my absence."
Donald grinned a width of welcome like the breaking of a blaze of sunshine after a thunderstorm over the waters of the neighbouring Lochconan.
"And 'deed it was very little of the deer that I was thinking of to-day, Glenconan, – though I might possibly have been speaking of them to the station-master here," he added, conscientiously. "And it's a pity but there was your piper to give you your welcome; but Peter has been palsied since the Martinmas before last – and short in the wind, moreover. And how have you been keeping, sir; and how was Miss Grace?"
"Exceedingly well, and all the better for the thought of coming home. I can answer for myself, and I can answer for her too. As for Miss Grace, you will see her here in a few days, and then she can speak for herself, which she is very well able to do. And now, Donald, lend a hand with the luggage, will you? I long to be off, and up the glen."
As for the luggage, it was light enough. The heavy baggage had been forwarded a few days before. In the twinkling of an eye the waggonette was packed; the porter, exulting over a generous tip, was looking forward to a pleasant evening in the bar of the "MacTavish Arms"; and Donald sat perched beside the stylish coachman, watching the start of the impatient cobs.
There are few finer drives in the picturesque Western Highlands than that down the broad strath of the Bran and up the romantic valley of the tributary Conan. The comparatively open character of the pastoral scenery in the former valley is a fitting approach to the more gloomy grandeur of the other. Dipping into Strathoran, after some of the more savage landscapes through which you have passed in the train, you might pronounce the country almost tame. The river meanders among gently sloping green hills, strewed here and there with stones, and crested with heather. From the level of the carriage-road you seldom catch a glimpse of the towering summits of any of the noble giants in the background; but at the "meeting of the waters," where the Conan joins the Bran, the scenery changes its character altogether. Entering the side-gorge, where the shadows gather even at noon, we leave softness and light for sternness and desolation. The swift black rush of the Conan, which has been pent for a space between beetling cliffs, pitches itself in the exuberance of sudden release over a brawling and foaming waterfall. The eddies of the deep dark pool below confound themselves with the reflected blackness of interlacing fir-boughs. As for the road, it has been roughly yet shrewdly engineered along the sloping ledges of the cliffs that hang between the hills and the river. It is a safe enough ascent, for the gradients are broad though steep, but a dangerous place to drive down under any circumstances; for it is only fenced on the river-side by an occasional upright stone in the Alpine fashion, and its gravel is apt to be washed and mined by the side-rills flowing across it from a succession of trickling cascades.
The elder of the two young men had never visited the glen before. In silent admiration, with a rapt
