_Degrades the wholesome earth--these all come near To gaze upon the wonder of the hills, And drink the limpid clearness of the rills. Yet each returns to what he holds most dear_, _To change the script and grind the mammon mills Unpurified; for what men hither bring, That take they hence, and Nature doth appear_ _As one that spends herself for sodden wills, Who pearls of price before the swine doth fling, And from the shrine casts out the sacred gear._ Glen Conquhar was a summer resort. Its hillsides had never been barred by the intrusive and peremptory notice-board, a bugbear to ladies strolling book in hand, a cock-shy to the children passing on their way to school. The Conquhar was a swift, clear-running river coursing over its bed of gneiss, well tucked-in on either side by green hayfields, where the grasshopper for ever "burred," and the haymakers stopped with elbows on their rakes to watch the passer-by. The Marquis had never enforced his rights of exclusion in his Highland solitudes. His shooting-lodge of Ben Dhu, which lay half a dozen miles to the north, was tenanted only by himself and a guest or two during the months of September and October. The visitors at the hotel above the Conquhar Water saw now and then a tall figure waiting at the bridge or scanning the hill-side through a pair of deer-stalker glasses. Then the underlings of the establishment would approach and in awe-struck tones whisper the information, "That's the Marquis!" For it is the next thing in these parts to being Providence to be the Marquis of Rannoch.