Nature had gifted Miss Gallosh with a generous share of romantic sentiment.  It was she who had egged on her father to rent this Highland castle for the summer, instead of chartering a yacht as he had done for the past few years; and ever since they had come here that sentiment had grown, till she was ready to don the white cockade and plot a new Jacobite uprising.  Then, while her heart was in this inspired condition, a noble young chief had stepped in to complete the story.  No wonder her dark eyes burned.

“What attachment you must feel for each stone of the Castle!” she continued in a rapt voice.  “How your heart must beat to remember that your great-grandfather—­wasn’t his name Fergus?”

“Fergus:  yes,” said the Baron, blindly but promptly.

“No, no; it was Ian, of course.”

“Ach, so!  Ian he vas.”

“You were thinking of his father,” she smiled.

“Yes, his fazzer.”

She reflected sagely.

“I am afraid I get my facts mixed up some times.  Ian—­ah, Reginald came before him—­not Fergus!”

“Reginald—­oh yes, so he did!”

She looked a trifle disappointed.

“If I were you I should know them all by heart,” said she.

“I vill learn zem.  Oh yes, I most not make soch mistakes.”

Indeed he registered a very sincere vow to study his family history that afternoon.

“What was I saying?  Oh yes—­about your brave great-grandfather.  Do you know, Lord Tulliwuddle, I want to ask you a strange favor?  You won’t think it very odd of me?”

“Odd?  Never!  Already it is granted.”

“I want to hear from your own lips—­from the lips of an actual Lord Tulliwuddle—­the story of your ancestor Ian’s exploit.”

With beseeching eyes and a face flushed with a sense of her presumption, she uttered this request in a voice that tore the Baron with conflicting emotions.

“Vich exploit do you mean?” he asked in a kindly voice but with a troubled eye.

“You must know!  When he defended the pass, of course.”

“Ach, so!”

The Baron looked at her, and though he boasted of no such inventive gifts as his friend Bunker, his ardent heart bade him rather commit himself to perdition than refuse.

“You will tell it to me?”

“I vill!”

Making as much as possible of the raconteur’s privileges of clearing his throat, settling himself into good position, and gazing dreamily at the tree-tops for inspiration, he began in a slow, measured voice—­

“In ze pass he stood.  Zen gomed his enemies.  He fired his gon and shooted some dead.  Zen did zey run avay.  Zat vas vat happened.”

When he ventured to meet her candid gaze after thus lamely libelling his forefather, he was horrified to observe that she had already recoiled some feet away from him, and seemed still to be in the act of recoiling.