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438 conversation with an elderly Highlander in homespuns; while the smoke of the train was visible in the middle-distance, as it came sobbing and puffing up the stiff incline. The cause of the excitement might be explained by a carriage that had pulled up on the shingle sweep before the pine-built porch of the little booking-office. It was a waggonette of teak, with a pair of smart chestnut cobs – one and the other strong, low, and serviceable; while the well-set-up driver had a certain style about him that savoured rather of the Parks and Piccadilly than of Ross-shire.

"And as I was saying to you, Mr Ferguson," drawled the Highlander in homespun, "this will be a great day for Glenconan."

"I do not doubt it, Mr Ross – I do not doubt it," replied the other, motioning away with an affable wave of the arm the tender of the Highlander's snuff-mull. He was excited, and could not help showing it, though he prided himself on the serenity of his deportment. "We do what we can; but man's powers are limited, and we must have resident proprietors if we are to develop the local traffic."

Donald Ross rumpled up his shaggy eyebrows. He was a fine specimen of the elderly hillman – as tall as the station-master, and far more muscular. Hard-looking and weather-beaten, he seemed to have worked away, in a long life among the hills, all superabundant flesh from his bone and sinew. Though his Saxon was serviceable, like the cobs, he was not strong in it; he failed to catch the meaning of the station-master, and he struck back into his own line of thought.

"Ay, more resident gentlemen, as you were saying, will be a great thing; and it will be a great thing for Glenconan when we have one of the 'Glenconans' among us again. I'm thinking he will be turning Corryvreckan and Glengoy into deer; and 'deed these shepherd-men are just one of the plagues of Egypt that the minister would be speaking about the former Sabbath-day."

Meanwhile the train was approaching, and at last it drew up at the platform. Three gentlemen got out of a first-class carriage. The station-master received them cap in hand, with an obsequiousness significant of the solemnity of the occasion. As for Donald, he slightly lifted his deer-stalker bonnet, and pulled shyly at a grizzled forelock; but his grey eyes gleamed with such a soft satisfaction as you may see in a friendly collie gratified by the home-coming of his master.

The foremost of the three, who naturally took the lead, was a hale veteran of about sixty or somewhat more, cast very much in the manly mould of the keeper. His dress was almost as rough, though carefully put on ; but there was no possibility of mistaking him for anything but a gentleman: and if his face was beaming with excitement and good-humour, he was nevertheless the sort of man you would have been sorry to quarrel with. There was energy of purpose in the features, that were high and even harsh, as in the flash of the keen grey eyes; with a touch of sarcastic resolution about the corners of the firm mouth. His companions, who kept themselves modestly in the background, were boys in comparison. One of them might have come of age a year or two before; the other was some half-dozen years his senior.

The elderly gentleman acknowledged the salutation of the station-master with a nod, and a quick look that seemed to read the man through and dispose of him. But his greeting to Donald was cor-