;

My heart swelled; his chief! and I had no right to the soil, beyond the dust that adhered to my shoes yet Callum's respect for me was as great as if I sessed all the lands of the Siol nan Alpin.

pos

Egad, this is like some of the things I have read of in the Scotch novels,' said Sir Horace, with a supercilious smile; is it not Laura?"

Exactly, papa.

If I had only my sketch-book here,' added her friend.

'Aw-yaas-vewy good,' drawled Mr. Snobleigh, as he applied a vesta to his meerschaum; here we have a couple of bare-legged Sawney Beans, and all we want is a witch with a caldron

"Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake:
Eye of newt and toe of frawg,

Wool of bat and tongue of dawg,"

and all that sort of thing-a brownie-aw-aw- -a black dwarf, and so forth; eh, Miss Everingham ?" Anything you please, Mr. Snobleigh, now that dear papa is safe.'

Safe,' added the frank Tom Clavering; but for our brave and sturdy friends, he had now perhaps been at the bottom of yonder lock-or loch, as they call it.'

It is a bit of romance, Laura, love,' said Miss Clavering, with one of her brightest smiles; do not the place, the costume, and the whole affair, remind you of what is it-you remember the book, Mr. Snobleigh?'

Eh-aw, yaas,' was the languid reply; but do you admire the costume, eh? I was once nearly dispensing with the superfluous luxury of pantaloons myself, and, aw-aw, exchanging from the Grenadier Gawds into an 'Ighland corps, which threw us into the shade in the Phoenix Pawk.'

• The deuce you were,' said Clavering; that would

be to commence the sliding-scale, Snob, my boy; from the Guards to the line, and from thence'

Eh-aw-to the dawgs.'

6

'You are a noble fellow,' said Laura Everingham to Callum; and I shall never, never forget you!' Callum bowed.

'Give my dearest love to Mrs. Mac Innon-the kind old lady your mother,' she added to me; ' and say that I shall ever remember her kindness-poor dear old thing-and she so ill too!'

Aw-Snaggs, old fellow-do you think she has any knowledge of the aw-aw-second sight?'

'Why?' inquired Snaggs, with a furtive glance at

me.

I have made up a devilish heavy book on the Derby, and wondaw rathaw which horse will win,' said Snobleigh.

Snaggs smiled faintly, and reined back his pony. Although at that time only the half of what this fine gentleman said was understood by me, I gave him a glance so furious, that after attempting to survey me coolly through his glass for a second, he grew pale, smiled, and looked another way.

At last, the baronet grew weary of all this; he pocketed his purse, and stepped into the carriage; his friends found seats also--the steps were shut upthe door closed, and with its varnished wheels flashing in the morning sun, away it bowled, the horses, two fine bays, at a rapid trot, and Snaggs spurring furiously behind. Callum and I were left on the narrow mountain-path with saddened, humbled, and irritated hearts, that smarted and rebelled under the loftiness of tone which the possession of a little filthy lucre,' enabled these blasé voluptuaries to assume towards us, who were the old hereditary sons of the soil.

'I would ask you to my hut,' said Callum,' but for three days no food has been there.'

Come, Callum-come with me, and though I have but little to offer, that little shall be shared with you and a thousand welcomes to it,' said I, and we turned our steps together homeward.

CHAPTER VI.

WHICH TREATS OF MANY THINGS.

I HAVE said that Laura Everingham was pretty rather than beautiful, and graceful rather than dignified. I may add, that she was winning rather than witty; but her friend Miss Clavering was both beautiful and brilliant; and frequently as I had seen both these attractive English girls, it was Laura, whose gentleness, voice, and face, made the most vivid impression on me; and thus, with my mind full of her image, I returned slowly and thoughtfully towards the old jointure-house of Glen Ora.

Three weeks passed away.

The great service we, or Callum, rather, had rendered to Sir Horace, was forgotten, for the adventures of that night had given the baronet a violent and allabsorbing fit of the gout, and a fever which confined him to bed; and amid his friends, the luxuries which surrounded him, and the frivolities of fashionable life, he forgot that save for the fearless heart and strong arm of Mac Ian he must have perished by the waters of the Uisc Dhu, without leaving, perhaps, a trace of his fate behind. And poor Callum-he whose Spartan virtue had declined the proffered rewardwas often almost starving; for his little crop had failed; his patches of wheat and potatoes were blighted, though carefully reared on the sunny side of Ben Ora; and, like others in the glen, he anti

cipated with sorrow and anxiety the usual visit of the pious and uncompromising Snaggs when the termtime arrived.

My poor mother's health was failing fast, and as it failed, her spirit sank. She lacked many comforts which I was without the means of procuring; and though old Mhari and her niece Minnie were unwearying and unremitting in their kindness and ministry, she seemed to be dying literally by inches, yet without any visible ailment a painful and a terrible contemplation for me, who, except the people in the glen, and the tics of blood old Highland custom and tradition gave between us, had not another relative in the world; for all my kindred-ay more than thirty of them-had died, as I have said, in the service of their country.

She was passing away from among us, and now, for her sake, I regretted that my foster-brother had not stooped to avail himself of the reward proffered by Sir Horace; for even that small sum would have been at her service, as honest Callum Mac Ian loved and revered her as if she had been his own mother.

With such sad, bitter, and humiliating reflections, the memory of the winning smile, the thankful glance, and soft pretty manner of Laura Everingham, struggled hard for mastery; but as weeks rolled on, these pleasing recollections gave place to a just emotion of anger, at what I deemed her cold and haughty neglect of iny mother, whom she had neither visited nor invited to the new house of Glen Ora. Vague suspicions floated in my mind that Snaggs the factor was in some degree to blame for this apparent discourtesy, and these surmises afterwards proved to be correct. Moreover, the moustached Captain Clavering, and his perfumed friend, Mr. Adolphus Frederick Snobleigh, whom we saw shooting and deerstalking on the hill sides, usually passed me with a

nod or glance of recognition, because I was coarsely clad, and to them seemed but a mountain gilly, though every bonnet in Glen Ora was veiled at my approach in reverence to the name I inherited. But this was the result of old Celtic sympathies-the ties of clanship and kindred, the historical, traditionary, and poetic veneration of the Highland peasant for the head of his house, humbled and poor though that house may be; sympathies deep, bitter, fiery and enthusiastic, and beyond the comprehension of a devil-may-care guardsman like Clavering, or an effeminate blasé parvenu, and man-about-town, like Snobleigh.

Once a liveried lacquey with a well-powdered head brought a beautiful bouquet of flowers with Miss Everingham's love to Mrs. Captain Mac Innon;' but as this knock-knee'd gentleman in the red plush inexpressibles was over-attentive to our pretty Minnie, her lover Callum flung him out of the front door, and tore his livery; and such was the report made by Mr. Jeames Toodles of his reception at the old jointure-house, that no more messages came from the family of Sir Horace.

Now came the crisis in the fortunes of the cottars of Glen Ora. The postman who travelled once weekly over the mountains, and bore the letters for the district, in a leathern bag strapped across his back, brought for each resident, myself included, a notice that Mr. Ephraim Snaggs would be in the glen on a certain day, to hold a rent-court, and collect the arrears; with a brief intimation, that if all demands were not satisfied in full, the houses would be destroyed, and the people driven off. That night, there went a wail of lamentation through the glen; the women wept, and the men gazed about them with the sullen apathy in which a despairing mariner may see his ship going down into the ocean, for there were neither remedy nor mercy to be expected. Our