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Rh a company of Highland volunteers were going through their yearly inspection, in tartan plaids and kilts, with the bagpipes playing as only bagpipes can. Had it been as it was in the days of their forefathers, when twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe made a rebellion, there was ample provision made here for at least five or six. Each volunteer, in addition to his guilt as a rebel, both for the arms which he carried, and the garb which he wore, would have been liable to be sent off by summary process to serve as a common soldier. But happily we live in loyal days, and under milder laws.



These bold citizen-soldiers ran but one risk, which no doubt was averted by a good-natured and sympathetic magistracy. To a fine of five shillings for being drunk and disorderly some of them certainly became exposed as the evening wore away. Let us hope that their excess was little more than an excess of loyalty in drinking the health of a Hanoverian queen.

At Portree our travellers took horse for Kingsburgh, a farm-house on Loch Snizort, whither they went, though a little off their road, in order to see Flora Macdonald. She had married a gentleman of the same clan, and so had not changed her name. "Here," writes Johnson, "I had the honour of saluting the far-famed Miss