"My father is a lawyer."
"Is he? Beg pardon, then. But your father isn't one of the confounded
lawyers, or else you wouldn't be here."
Kenneth laughed, and Max seemed more thoughtful.
"S'pose you think we're rather rough down here; but this is the
Highlands. You'll soon get used to us. There's no carriage, but we can
give you a mount on a capital pony. Walter Scott would do for you."
"Is Walter Scott alive? I've read all his stories."
"No, no; I mean our shaggy pony. He's half Scotch, half Shetland, and
the rummest little beggar you ever saw. He can climb and slide, and
jump like a grasshopper. All you've got to do is to stick your knees
into him and hold on by the mane when he's going up so steep a place
that you begin to slip over his tail, and you're all right, only you
have to kick at his nose when he tries to bite."
Max looked aghast.
"Can you fish?"
"No."
"But you brought a lot of rods."
"Oh yes. Father said I was to learn to fish and shoot while I was down
here, as some day I should be a Highland landlord."
"We can teach you all that sort of thing."
"Can you fish and shoot?"
"Can I? I say, are you chaffing me?"
"No; I mean it."
"Well, just a little. Let's see, I'm seventeen nearly, and I was only
six when my father made me fire off a gun first. I've got a little one
in the gun-room that I used to use."
"And were you very young when you began to learn to fish?"
"I caught a little salmon when I was eight. Father said the fish nearly
drowned me instead of me drowning the salmon. But I caught him all the
same."
"How was that?"
"Oh, I tumbled in, I suppose, and rolled over in the stream. Shon
pulled me out."
"Did he?"
"Yes; Scood's father. He's one of our gillies. Lives down there."
"By that pig-sty?"
"Pig-sty? That isn't a pig-sty. That's a bothy."
"Oh!" said Max, as he stared at a rough, whitewashed hovel, thatched,
and covered with hazel rods tied down to keep the thatch from blowing
off.
"There won't be time to-night after dinner, but I'll take you down to
Shon to-morrow. We always call him Long Shon because he's so little,
and we pretend he's so fond of whisky. Scood's a head taller than his
father."
"It will be all most interesting, I'm sure," said Max, whose feet felt
very wet and uncomfortable.
"I'll take you to see Tavish too," continued Kenneth, with a half-laugh
at his companion's didactic form of speech. "Tavish is our forester."
"Forester?"
"Yes; and then I must introduce you to Donald Dhu."
"Is he a Scottish chief?"
"Well," said Kenneth, with a half laugh, "I daresay he thinks so. Like
pipes?"
"Pipes? No, I never tried them. I once had a cigarette, but I didn't
like it."
"Oh, I say, you are comic!" said Kenneth, laughing heartily, and then
restraining himself. "I meant the bagpipes. Donald is our piper."
"Your piper! How--"
Max was going to say horrible, as he recalled one of his pet
abominations, a dirty, kilted and plaided Scotchman, who made night
hideous about the Bloomsbury squares with his chanter and drone.
But he restrained himself, and, as Kenneth led the way here and there
about the little rocky knoll, he kept on talking.
"Donald has a place up in one of the towers--that one at the far corner.
He took to it to play in. He composes dirges and things up there."
"But do you like having a piper?"
"Like it? I don't know. He has always been here. He belongs to us.
There always was a piper to the Clan Mackhai. There, you can see right
up the loch here, and that's where our salmon river empties itself over
those falls. See that hill?"
"Yes."
"That's Ben Doy. You'll like to climb up that. It isn't one of the
highest, but it's four thousand, and jolly steep. There's a loch right
up in it full of little trout."
Boom--boom--boom--boom.
"What's that?"
"That? why, the dinner-gong, of course. Just time to have a wash first.
We don't dress down here. That's what father always says to visitors
who bring bobtails and chokers. Bring a bobtail with you?"
"I brought my dress suit."
"Then, if I were you, I would make it up into a parcel, and send it back
to London. What's your name, did you say?"
"Maxi--Max Blande."
"To be sure! Max Blande, Esquire, Russell Square, per Macbrayne and
Caledonian Railway; and we'll catch a salmon, or you shall, and send to
your father same time. Come on; run. Hi, dogs, then! Bruce, boy!
Chevy, Dirk! Come along, Sneeshing! Oh, man, you can't half run!"
"No," said Max, panting heavily, and nearly falling over a projecting
piece of rock.
"I say, mind! Why, if you fell there, you'd go right down into the sea,
and it would be salt water instead of soup."
Kenneth laughed heartily at his own remark as they ran on, to pause at
the steep slope up to the castle, where the dogs stopped short, as if
well drilled as to the boundaries they were to pass, while the two lads
once more crossed the gloomy ruined quadrangle and entered the house.