Coming this way from Lochow, the traveller will get his first sight of the waters of Loch Finne by standing on a stone that lies upon a little knowe above his lordship’s stables. It is a spot, they say, Argile himself had a keen relish for, and after a day of chasing the deer among the hills and woods, sometimes would he come and stand there and look with satisfaction on his country. For he could see the fat, rich fields of his policies there, and the tumultuous sea that swarms with fish, and to his left he could witness Glenaora and all the piled-up numerous mountains that are full of story if not of crop. To this little knowe M’Iver and I made our way. I would have rushed on it with a boy’s impetuousness, but he stopped me with a hand on the sleeve. “Canny, canny,” said he, “let us get the very best of it There’s a cloud on the sun that’ll make Finne as cold, flat, and dead as lead; wait till it passes.” We waited but a second or two, and then the sun shot out above us, and we stepped on the hillock and we looked, with our bonnets in our hands. Loch Finne stretched out before us, a spread of twinkling silver waves that searched into the curves of a myriad bays; it was dotted with skiffs. And the yellow light of the early year gilded the remotest hills of Ardno and Ben Ime, and the Old Man Mountain lifted his ancient rimy chin, still merrily defiant, to the sky. The parks had a greener hue than any we had seen to the north; the town revealed but its higher chimneys and the gable of the kirk, still its smoke told of occupation; the castle frowned as of old, and over all rose Dunchuach. “O Dunchuach! Dunchuach!” cried M’Iver, in an ecstasy, spreading out his arms, and I thought of the old war-worn Greeks who came with weary marches to their native seas. “Dunchuach! Dunchuach!” he said; “far have I wandered, and many a town I’ve seen, and many a prospect that was fine, and I have made songs to maids and mountains, and foreign castles too, but never a verse to Dunchuach. I do not know the words, but at my heart is lilting the very tune, and the spirit of it is here at my breast.” Then the apple rose in his throat, and he turned him round about that I might not guess the tear was at his eye. “Tuts,” said I, broken, “‘tis at my own; I feel like a girl.” “Just a tickling at the pap o’ the hass,” he said in English; and then we both laughed.