With an hour or two to spare in Glasgow on my way to the Highlands, I lunched with my friend (the friendship was personal, not political) the editor of the _Observer_, at his Radical Club. In the middle of the meal a member rose with a long face, and announced an unexpected Unionist victory at Tavistock--whereat, to the consternation of every one, I cheered loudly! I reached Fort Augustus the same evening, to learn of the death, at the advanced age of ninety-three, of our kind old friend and neighbour Mrs. Ellice of Invergarry, one of the last of the great landladies who a few years before had by a curious coincidence owned and managed (very capably, too) some of the largest estates in the North of Scotland. The vast Glengarry property, once the domain of the Macdonells, and stretching from the Caledonian Canal to the western seaboard, had been under Mrs. Ellice's sole control since her husband's death more than thirty years before. We at Fort Augustus, as well as the numerous Highland Catholics resident on her estate, and under our spiritual care, had always found in her a most friendly, kind and considerate neighbour. Two happenings I recall at Fort Augustus during these December days--one a remarkably interesting lecture on the theory of lake-temperature from a Mr. Wedderburn, who had been recently on the {205} Scottish loch survey; and the other event was our all (that is, all the priests of the monastery) being called on to vow, promise, swear and sign, individually and collectively, our adherence to the Creed of Pope Pius IV., which _I_ had sworn to some thirty-six years before.[14] This act of submission, enjoined on every Catholic priest in Christendom, was part of the vigorous campaign against Modernism initiated by Pope Pius X. Having discharged this duty, I betook myself to Keir, to spend Christmas with the Stirlings. It was a family party, including the Lovats and a few others, and we spent the season in homely Dickens fashion, with ghost-stories and snapdragon and a priceless Early Victorian conjurer in a crumpled dress suit, who accompanied tricks of really incredible antiquity with a "patter" almost prehistoric. One day we drove down to survey the grand old cathedral of Dunblane, very carefully restored (of course for Presbyterian worship) since I had last seen it. As we entered, we heard the opening strains of Elgar's _Ave Verum_-- [Illustration: Music fragment: Ave verum cor-pus na-tum Ex Ma-ri-a Vir-gi-ne! etc.]