Where foxes are sometimes like wolves for size and destructiveness, a Highland fox-hunter ranks with a rat-catcher. But Fife, at hand over the Ochils, is a civilised region in which Reynard claims his due observance. Near its border, still in Perthshire, is the sadly-decayed town of Abernethy, whose Round Tower makes the only monument of the days when it was a Pictish capital. Another seat of Pictish princes, not far away, was at Forteviot, near the Kinnoul Earls’ Dupplin Castle, where Edward Balliol defeated the Regent Mar in a hot fight, before marching on to Perth to be crowned for a time, when Scotland, like Brentford, had two kings. If only for their natural amenities, these spots might well be visited; yet to tourists they are unknown unless as way-stations respectively on the rival North British and Caledonian railways from Edinburgh to Perth. But to me each of their now obscure names is dearly familiar, since the days when they were landmarks on my way back from school, from which in those days one came back more gladly; and _Auchterarder_, FORTEVIOT, FORGANDENNY, made a _crescendo_ of joyful sounds, each hailing a stage nearer home. CHAPTER VI THE HIGHLAND LINE From Perth to Inverness runs the Highland Railway, that pierces through the heart of the Grampians. Giving off a branch to Loch Tay and coach routes to other choice nooks of the noblest northern county, this line mounts among the wilds of Atholl, and near its highest level brings us into Inverness-shire; then it descends to the old Badenoch Forest, down the upper course of the Spey, past Kingussie to Aviemore, where its main track turns over the Findhorn, and by Culloden to the capital of the Highlands. There is not a finer railway ride in the kingdom, as the tourist knows well enough from his programmes, so the Highland line needs no advertisement here. But there is an older use of this name, for the irregular line along which the Highlands fall in a broken wave upon the richer country, a zone pointed out by Scott and other writers as the most charming part of Scotland. The austere spirit of mountain solitudes is not so easily caught as the varied charms of a debateable land, where “the rivers find their way out of the mountainous region by the wildest leaps, and through the most romantic passes,” and Nature’s rugged features straggle down among good roads and inns, the practical and the picturesque throwing each other into alternate relief. This is the special loveliness of southern and eastern Perthshire, across which the Grampians make an oblique border, once too often marked with fire and sword, while its straths and lake basins repeat in miniature the same mingling of Highland and Lowland scenery, and of homes thus contrasted by “Ian Maclaren”:--