A STORY OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
It was an unfortunate business—most unfortunate; for the Duke's piper and the Duke's game-keeper were the best of friends; they never met at the Glengolly clachan but they had their 'glass' together; nay, when friends met, such as they—and it was astonishing how often accident led the steps of both men to the smoky chimney-cheek of Betty MacDonald's clachan—the glass had to pass to and fro pretty often before the men parted. And as Betty knew full well that John Cameron the piper, and Donald MacTavish the game-keeper, her best customers all the year round, were critics upon whom no adulterated or diluted fluid could impose, Betty was careful that to them at least nothing but the best of whisky and stoup-measures—erring, if they erred at all, on the roomy side—should be served. The natural result of such companionship and mutual consumption of frequent gills was that John loved Donald 'like a vera brither;' while Donald frequently assured John, as they stumbled over the moor together in the gloaming, or more often when the horned moon was high, that not one of his own eight brothers was to be mentioned in the same breath with John—as regarded his, the game-keeper's, emotions towards him.
What then were Betty's feelings, late one unlucky autumn evening on her return from the byre, where she had gone to milk her solitary cow, to find the two friends in the midst of a hot argument, loud-mouthed both, and looking at each other across the table, on which stood the almost empty measure and glasses, with expressions on their honest gnarled faces that could hardly by any interpretation be termed mild? And this before a third guest too, a hairy-visaged gentleman whom Betty reckoned half-daft, seeing that he had spent the last three weeks 'splashin' a bit o' auld canvas wi' paint, and ca'ed it Ben Sluaigh,' but to whom it nevertheless behoved her to be polite, taking into account the liberal rent he paid for her best room. The gentleman sat in his chair with a tumbler of whisky-and-water before him, taking little part in the discussion, but smoking diligently with a broad grin, as Betty noted indignantly as she went 'ben' with her knitting, sorry to hear the voices of the disputants waxing louder and louder. Betty had a feminine dislike of argument; arguments in the clachan were generally the prelude to blows. Her idea of a 'good crack' admitted only of varying shades, not differences of opinion, softened by frequent application to the bottle—a good story being not one whit the less welcome because oft-told. But here were John and Donald glaring at each other with knit brows, and John, who could never brook contradiction, bringing his massive fist down on the table so that the stoup-measure and glasses swayed.
'Ye're wrang, Tonald, I tell ye again ye're wrang—it wass biled!'
The game-keeper thus addressed, only shook his bald head slowly from side to side, remarking after a pause, with a smile of superior knowledge that seemed to fan the flame of his friend's anger: 'Na, John, na: it iss nefer biled.'
'But it iss biled, and iss aye biled, I'm telling ye, and biled in sweet milk too.—I'm not like some folk, sir,' said the piper, turning to address the stranger in the arm-chair, 'that talk a lot o' nonsense apoot what they ken naething apoot.'
'Whether his oil-cake was boiled or not boiled,' said the stranger, 'the bull is as fine an animal as I have seen in the Highlands; though I was not sorry, as I sketched him, to have the stream and a good steep bank between us.'
'Noo, John, you are trying to impose on the ignorance o' the shentleman; that iss what ye are trying to do, John, and that iss no like ye. It iss verra pad to let the English shentleman go away, and it iss savages that he'll pe thinkin' we are in the Hielants, to pe feeding oor young bulls' (pronounced bills) 'wi biled oil-cake, as if oor young bulls needet oil-cake when they hef cood green grass and plenty; or allooin' they do need it, to hef it biled, and them wi' teeth that if they wanted wad crack whinstanes. Oh, but it iss a fine joke to hear ye talk o' biled oil-cake, John Cameron!'