and addressing the steward with as little show
of eagerness as possible, I begged the pleasure
of an introduction to his beef and ham.

"It is just a little too soon," said the
steward, a very dry rusk of a Scotchman;
"ye canna have it till supper."

My hunger broke out instantly.
“Nonsense," I said, " I have not dined: I must
have something to eat."

"I am vary sor-r-y," said the steward, with
a composed look; " but I canna gie ye to eat
till the ship starts."

"When will it start? It is now nearly
seven. It was advertised to start at seven."

"Ye 'll wait only just a little," said my
friend.

The ship had not started at half-past seven;
and at eight o'clock she was only blowing a
cloud in a composed way: at half-past eight,
however, we got out into the river.

Forty-two hours' passage, said the
advertisement. We were forty- eight hours,
however, before we touched at the dry land
of Aberdeen. By the delay of the packet we
had missed the stage-coach, which only leaves
three times a week, and so I spent a little
more than I had saved upon the old-fashioned
locomotive, a yellow chariot with its
four-posters before it; and so at eight o'clock that
evening we arrived safely at Glenfern, the
shooting lodge of the Earl of Groats, which
is situated thirty miles north of the Dee,
and surrounded by an immense tract of
moorland.

The lodge stands in a picturesque valley;
purple hills rise on every side, peeping over
the heads of one another, and sweeping out
some miles away into the dimensions of
majestic mountains. Before the lodge itself
there flows a pretty little trout stream, over
which a bridge is thrown for the accommodation
of all persons who are too squeamish to
walk like proper Scotchmen through the
water. Over a fordable stream the
Highlanders consider bridges to be just
contemptible. The late heavy rains had swelled
this trout stream into a foaming river, and
very pleasantly it rushed through the valley
and among the rising dew. The sunset-rays
fell upon the distant hill-tops, and the fresh,
damp evening air was full of the scent of bell
heather. I was glad to feel, among such hills
as these, that I had left the Hills of Holborn
and of Ludgate far behind.

The Earl of Groats belongs to a genus of
Tories which is fast following the Dodo. He
has maintained the opinions that his father
had before him, at the cost of place, power,
and fortune. He has stood up for consistency,
and having neyer changed his own ideas, finds
that the change in the relations between
himself and the surrounding world has rapidly
become enormous. Abhorring motion, he
would root himself to land, and so the vessel
of the State has sailed away out of his reach,
with plenty of stout hearts on board: out of
his reach and so nearly out of sight, that he
has left off watching it through his great
family   telescope. Let the world go: here is
the noble Tory in Glenfern, for whom no
politician ever asks in London, very much in
request upon his own domain. With all his
prejudices on his head, you would not in long
travel meet with a more high-souled,
noble-hearted, and right honourable man.
Politically he is weak; morally he is strong. He
welcomed me quite tenderly as the son of an
old friend and colleague. My father and he,
he said, started in public life together. So he
introduced me very cordially to his cousin
Bookby, having before-hand given me a
private introduction to his cousin's character,
by telling me that I should find him a generous
fellow and a most agreeable companion.
Bookby was in the dining-room surrounded
by the group of sportmen then assembled at
Glenfern, among whom there were one or
two with whom I was already intimately
acquainted.

There was good prospect of a pleasant
week, putting grouse out of the question.
"Mrs. Bookby," said the earl, presenting
me to an unaffected little woman, who was
discussing some Scotch pebbles with a group
of gentlemen, " Mrs. Bookby is kind enough
to preside over my bachelor house, in
order to impose upon us all good hours and
social habits. She does more," he added, with
a sly glance at the extremely well-dressed
gentlemen, who were engaged over the pebbles
with her; " she bids us mind our looking-
glasses, and causes us to produce results in
the way of toilet, that, I assure you, are quite
new to the moors." " And I assure you, Mr.
Croxpound," said the lady, speaking to me,
"that it is no light thing to have made reform
acceptable at Glenfern."  Hereupon there
ensued among the gentlemen a gay political
discussion, in which Reform Bills and such
absurd matters were discussed with much
pleasantry, the presence of Mrs. Bookby
serving evidently as a stimulus to a great
tilting of wits. Men always endeavour to
come out when there is a woman present;
Bookby himself being excepted, however, in
the present instance, for in his absent way he
stared through his eye-glass fixedly at somebody,
and said nothing at all.

Among the guests there was a gentleman
who became prominent at dinner-time, a
Monsieur Bois-le-Comte, whose presence the
earl tolerated— though he hated Frenchmen—
because he was the friend of his cousin
Bookby. Monsieur Bois-le-Comte being upon
the moors, closely confined himself—not
unwisely I thought— to a study of grouse in all
varieties of cookery. Grouse in soup,
however, was the dish that gave him the most
unfeigned satisfaction. After the departure
of Mrs. Bookby, I must also note how
thoroughly I felt the meaning of the twinkle
in the eye of Monsieur, when he had taken
his first sip of the Glenfern whiskey toddy,
made with a strong infusion of pine-apple in