The kind abbot of Fort Augustus would not let me return to the monastery, as I had expected to do when my Dumfries work was over, but {118} suggested instead some further rest (for I was still far from robust) with my own people in the west of Scotland. I spent a few pleasant days first at Mountstuart, and was rather amused on the first of August (the end of the "close season" for small birds) to see my young host sally forth--a sailor, an architect, and an artist in his wake--on a shooting-expedition, with as much ceremony and preparation as if it had been the Twelfth![2] We motored out after them, and lunched on one of the highest points of the island; drinking in, as we ate our Irish stew, an entrancing prospect of the blue Firth, the long sinuous Ayrshire coast, and the lofty serrated peaks of Arran. From Bute I went on to Dunskey, a place full to me always--even under its new, altered, and improved conditions--of a hundred happy memories. There was an _al fresco_ entertainment--tea, music, and dancing on the lawn--given by my niece to the tenants and their families one afternoon; and I (mindful of old days) was happy to watch her and her boy, the little heir, welcoming their guests. Some of their names, Thorburns, Withers and MacWilliams, recalled the past; and they greeted me with the friendly simple cordiality characteristic of Galloway folk. One of our house-party had just arrived (by yacht) from the Isle of Man, where he had been staying for some weeks. He had stories of the quaint customs of the Men of Man, and wrote down for me the oath administered in their courts. {119} The closing simile is delightfully unconventional:-- By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that God has miraculously wrought in heaven above and in the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, execute the laws of this isle, and between party and party as indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the fish. At Blairquhan I found a large party assembling for August 12: naval cronies of my sailor brother (including the captain of H.M.S. _Britannia_), the master of the Whaddon Chase Hunt, Selby Lowndes, with his wife and daughter, and other pleasant people. Shooting, dancing, bridge and golf filled up their days agreeably enough. I essayed the last-named sport, but was mortified to find myself still as weak as a kitten. The weather was glorious, but my brother complained that the long drought had left not a fruit in the garden; whereupon I suggested the substitute mentioned by Captain Topham in his _Letters from Edinburgh_ a century and a half ago:--