Then the Old Tory leaped to his feet as the horses went prancing by.

“Gie a cheer, boys!” he cried; and as the muzzle of Mons Meg swept down the file, a strange wavering cry arose, that was half a gowl of anger and half a broken-backed cheer.

Then “Bang!” went Mons Meg, and David Armitt took down the street at full speed with sixteen angry men jumping at his tail.  But, by good luck, he got upon the back of the Laird’s coach, and was borne rapidly out of their sight down the dusty road that led to the county town.

It was the Old Tory’s Waterloo.  He did not venture back till the time of the bee-killing.  Then he came without fear, for he knew he was the only man who could take off the honey from the village hives to the satisfaction of the parish.

The Old Tory kept the secret of his Toryism to the last.

Only the minister caught it as he lay a-dying.  He was not penitent, but he wanted to explain matters.

“It’s no as they a’ think, minister,” he said, speaking with difficulty.  “I cared nocht aboot it, ae way or the ither.  I’m sure I aye wantit to be a douce man like the lave.  But Meg was sair, sair to leeve wi’.  She fair drave me till’t.  D’ye think the like o’ that wull be ta’en into account, as it were—­up yonder?”

The minister assured him that it would, and the Old Tory died in peace.

V

THE GREAT RIGHT-OF-WAY CASE

  The Vandal and the Visigoth come here,
      The trampler under foot, and he whose eyes,
      Unblest, behold not where the glory lies;
  The wallower in mire, whose sidelong leer

  Degrades the wholesome earth—­these all come near
      To gaze upon the wonder of the hills,
      And drink the limpid clearness of the rills. 
  Yet each returns to what he holds most dear,

  To change the script and grind the mammon mills
      Unpurified; for what men hither bring,
          That take they hence, and Nature doth appear

  As one that spends herself for sodden wills,
      Who pearls of price before the swine doth fling,
          And from the shrine casts out the sacred gear.

Glen Conquhar was a summer resort.  Its hillsides had never been barred by the intrusive and peremptory notice-board, a bugbear to ladies strolling book in hand, a cock-shy to the children passing on their way to school.  The Conquhar was a swift, clear-running river coursing over its bed of gneiss, well tucked-in on either side by green hayfields, where the grasshopper for ever “burred,” and the haymakers stopped with elbows on their rakes to watch the passer-by.  The Marquis had never enforced his rights of exclusion in his Highland solitudes.  His shooting-lodge of Ben Dhu, which lay half a dozen miles to the north, was tenanted only by himself and a guest or two during the months of September and October.  The visitors at the hotel above the Conquhar Water saw now and then a tall figure waiting at the bridge or scanning the hill-side through a pair of deer-stalker glasses.  Then the underlings of the establishment would approach and in awe-struck tones whisper the information, “That’s the Marquis!” For it is the next thing in these parts to being Providence to be the Marquis of Rannoch.