'And a most sensible notion too,' Mr. Hodson said. 'But look here, my friend: you've brought us up to a kind of Pisgah; I would rather go down into that land of Gilead, and see what the farmhouses are like.'
'Ay, but I brought ye here because it's about the best place for giving ye an idea of the marches,' said the man imperturbably, for he knew his own business better than the stranger. 'Do ye see the burn away over there beyond the farmhouse?'
'Yes, yes.'
'Well, that's the Balnavrain march right up to the top; and then the Duchess runs all along the sky-line yonder—to the black scaur.'
'You don't say!' observed Mr. Hodson. 'I never heard of a Duchess doing anything so extraordinary.'
'But we march with the Duchess,' said the other, a little bewildered.
'That's a little more decorous, anyway. Well now, I suppose we can make all that out on the Ordnance Survey map when we get back to the hotel. I'm for getting down into the valley—to have a look around; I take it that if I lived here I shouldn't spend all the time on a mountain-top.'
Well, the long and the short of it was that, after having had two or three hours of laborious and diligent tramping and inspection and questioning and explanation, and after having been entertained with a comfortable meal of oat-cake and hot broth and boiled beef at a hospitable farmhouse, they set out again on their cold drive back to the hotel, where a long business conversation went on all the evening, during dinner and after dinner. It was very curious how each of these three brought this or that objection to the place—as if bound to do so; and how the fascination of the mere site of it had so clearly captivated them none the less. Of course, nothing conclusive was said or done that night; but, despite these deprecatory pleas, there was a kind of tacit and general admission that Balnavrain, with proper supervision and attention to the possibilities offered by its different altitudes, might be made into a very admirable little estate, with a dwelling-house on it second in point of situation to none on the whole western sea-board of the Highlands.
'Ronald,' said Mr. Hodson that evening, when Mr. Carmichael had gone off to bed (he was making for the south early in the morning), 'we have had some hard days' work; why should we let Loch Naver lie idle? I suppose we could drive from here somehow? Let us start off to-morrow; and we'll have a week's salmon-fishing.'
'To Inver-Mudal?' he said—and he turned quite pale.