AN UNEXPECTED ALLY APPEARS The Baron returned at the dinner-hour, and had in a great measure recovered his composure and good-humour.

He not only confirmed the stories which Edward had heard from Rose and Bailie Macwheeble, but added many anecdotes from his own experience, concerning the state of the Highlands and their inhabitants.

The chiefs he pronounced to be, in general, gentlemen of great honour and high pedigree, whose word was accounted as a law by all those of their own sept, or clan.

'It did not indeed,' he said, 'become them, as had occurred in late instances, to propone their prosapia, a lineage which rested for the most part on the vain and fond rhymes of their seannachies or bhairds, as aequiponderate with the evidence of ancient charters and royal grants of antiquity, conferred upon distinguished houses in the Low Country by divers Scottish monarchs; nevertheless, such was their outrecuidance and presumption, as to undervalue those who possessed such evidents, as if they held their lands in a sheep's skin.' This, by the way, pretty well explained the cause of quarrel between the Baron and his Highland ally.

But he went on to state so many curious particulars concerning the manners, customs, and habits of this patriarchal race that Edward's curiosity became highly interested, and he inquired whether it was possible to make with safety an excursion into the neighbouring Highlands, whose dusky barrier of mountains had already excited his wish to penetrate beyond them.