“Older!” he cried; “she was a MacVicar as far as ever I heard; it was the name she took to kirk with her when she married your father.” “So,” said I; “but----” “And though I allow her grandfather Dpl-a-mhonadh [Donald-of-the-Hills] was a Campbell, it was in a roundabout way; he was but the son of one of the Craignish gentry.” “You yourself----” “Sir!” said he in a new tone, as cold as steel and as sharp, misjudging my intention. “You yourself are no more than a M’Iver.” “And what of that?” he cried, cooling down a bit “The M’ivers of Asknish are in the direct line from Duncan, Lord of Lochow. We had Pennymore, Stron-shira, and Glenaora as cadets of Clan Campbell when your Craignish cross-breeds were under the salt.” “Only by the third cousin,” said I; “my father has told me over and over again that Duncan’s son had no heir.” And so we went into all this perplexity of Highland pedigree like old wives at a waulking, forgetting utterly that what we began to quarrel about was the more serious charge of lying. M’lver was most frantic about the business, and I think I was cool, for I was never a person that cared a bodle about my history bye the second generation. They might be lairds or they might be lackeys for all the differ it made to me. Not that there were any lackeys among them. My grandfather was the grandson of Tormaid Mor, who held the whole east side of Lochow from Ford to Sonachan, and we have at home the four-posted bed that Tormaid slept on when the heads of the house of Argile were lying on white-hay or chaff. At last John broke into a laugh. “Aren’t you the _amadan_ to be biting the tongue between your teeth?” he said. “What is it?” I asked, constrained to laugh too. “You talk about the crook in our Campbell tongue in one breath,” said he, “and in the next you would make yourself a Campbell more sib to the chief than I am myself. Don’t you think we might put off our little affairs of family history till we find a lady and a child in Stron-gara?” “No more of it, then,” said I. “Our difference began on my fool’s notion that because I had something of what you would call a liking for this girl, no one else should let an eye light on her.” By now we were in a wide glade in the Tombreck wood. On our left we could see lying among the grey snow the house of Tombreck, with no light nor lowe (as the saying goes); and though we knew better than to expect there might be living people in it, we sped down to see the place. “There’s one chance in a million she might have ventured here,” I said.