style="font-size:15px;"> "How goes the project you have in view?" asked Duncan that evening of the skipper.
"Well," was the reply, "it is not what the French call a fait accompli just yet, but it is bound to be so before very long."
"Well, my 42nd cousin Frank here would like to go to sea also. Could you do with the three of us?"
"Yes. You must be prepared to rough it a bit, and we'll be rather cramped for room, but we shall manage. Eh, mate?"
"I'm sure we shall, and this young gentleman must take his fiddle."
"And I'll take the bagpipes," said Duncan, laughing.
"Hurrah!" cried the mate. "Won't we astonish the king of the Cannibal Islands? Eh?"
It was Frank's turn to cry "Hurrah!"
"But," he added, "will there be real live cannibals, sir?"
"Certainly. What good would dead ones be?"
"And is there a chance of being caught and killed and eaten, and all the like of that?"
"Ay, though it isn't pleasant to look forward to. Only mind this: I may tell you for your comfort that although, after being knocked on the head with a nullah, your Highland cousin would be trussed at once and hung up in front of a clear fire until done to a turn, you yourself would be kept alive for weeks. Penned up, you know, like a chicken."
"But why?"
"Oh, they always do that with London boys, because they are generally too lean for decent cooking, and need too much basting. You would be penned up and fattened with rice and bananas."
"Humph!" said Frank, and after a pause of thoughtfulness, "Well, I suppose there is some consolation in being kept alive a bit; but bother it all, I don't half like the idea of being a side dish."
The weather was more favourable during this voyage, and though bitterly cold, all the boys took plenty of exercise on the quarter-deck, and so kept warm. So, too, did the old minister, who was really a jolly fellow, and did not preach at them nor dilate on the follies of youth. Moreover, this son of the Auld Kirk enjoyed a hearty glass of toddy before turning in.
Leith at last!
And yonder, waiting anxiously on the quay, was Laird M'Vayne himself.
His broad smile grew broader when his boys waved their hands to him, and soon they were united once again.
CHAPTER IV. – WILD SPORTS ON MOORLAND AND ICE
Pretty little Flora M'Vayne was half afraid of the London boy at first. The violin won her heart, however, and before retiring for the night, when shaking hands with Frank, she nodded seriously as she told him:
"I'm not sure I sha'n't love you soon; Viking likes you, so you must be good."
Well, Frank was an impressionable boy, and he was very much struck by the child's innocent ways and beauty.
"I'm not sure," he said in reply, "that we won't be sweethearts before I leave. How would you like that?"
She shook her head. "No, no," she said, "you are very nice, but you are only an English boy. Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
I do not think that any two boys were ever more glad to find themselves back once more, safely under the parental roof-tree, than Duncan and Conal. They had made many friends in London, it is true, and spent many a happy evening therein, and these they could look back to with pleasure and with a sigh; but the city and town itself, with all its strange ways, the ignorance of its lower classes, its murdered twangy English, its filth and its festering iniquities-they positively shuddered when they thought of.
God seemed nowhere in London. Here in this wild and beautiful land He appeared to be everywhere.
The pure and virgin snow that clad the moors and mountains was a carpet on which angels might tread; the tiny budlets already appearing on the trees were scattered there by His own hand; yea, and the very wind that sighed and moaned through the forest was the breath of heaven.
And when the sun had gone down behind the waves of the western ocean did not
"The moon take up the wondrous tale
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeat the story of her birth,
While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn
Confirm the story as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole".
Yes, in wild and silent lands, God seems very near. It was in a country like this that the immortal poet Lord Byron wrote much of his best poetry. And no bolder song did he ever pen than Loch-na-garr. Near here many of his ancestors-the Gordons-were laid to rest after the fatal field of Culloden. In one verse he says-
"Ill-starred, though brave, did no vision foreboding
Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause?
Ah! were ye then destined to die at Culloden,
Though victory crown'd not your fall with applause.
Still were ye happy in death's earthly slumbers,
You rest with your clan in the caves of Braemar,
The pibroch resounds to the piper's loud numbers
Your deeds to the echoes of wild Loch-na-garr."
No wonder that, wandering amidst such soul-enthralling scenery, arrayed in the tartan of his clan, or thinking of the happy days of his boyhood, years and years afterwards he said as he sighed-
"England, thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roam'd on the mountains afar!
Oh! for the crags that are wild and majestic,
The steep frowning glories of dark Loch-na-garr."
But Frank Trelawney was a guest at Glenvoie, and, imbued with that spirit of hospitality for which Highlanders are so famous, the boys M'Vayne would have bitten their tongue through and through rather than say one disparaging word about England.
Nor was there any need, for tame and domestic though its scenery is, the whole history of the country, even before the Union, teems with deeds of derring-do, done by her brave sons, on many and many a blood-drenched field of battle.
As for Frank himself, he seemed not only to settle down to his life in the wilds in less than a week, but to become quite enthusiastic over "Scotland's hills and Scotland's dells"; and he was not slow in reminding his 42nd cousins that he too had a drop of real Highland blood in his veins.
"We'll soon make a man of you, dear boy," said the Laird one evening. "Now, myself, and my lads, with Vike and a setter, are going after the white hares to-morrow, and if you think yourself strong enough, we shall take you."
"Oh, I feel strong enough now for anything," replied Frank laughing.
"Mind it is terribly hard work; but there is a little snow on the ground, and we'll be able to track the hares easily."
"I don't think that Frank should go, Ronald," put in Mrs. M'Vayne; "the boy is far indeed from hardy, and it may exhaust him quite. You'll stay at home
