"Forgot herself." Kate came to her father's relief. "She often does; but one thing Miss Carnegie remembers, and that is that General Carnegie likes his cheroot after tiffin. Do you smoke, Mr. Carmichael? Oh, I am allowed to stay, if you don't object, and have forgiven my rudeness." "You make too much of a word, Miss Carnegie." Carmichael was not a man to take offence till his pride was roused. "Very likely my drover was a true blue Presbyterian, and his minister as genuine a cateran as himself. "Years ago I made the acquaintance of an old Highland minister called MacTavish, and he sometimes stays with me on his way north in the spring. For thirty years he has started at the first sign of snow, and spent winter spoiling the good people of the south. Some years he has gone home with three hundred pounds." "But how does he get the money?" inquired the General, "and what does he use it for?" "He told me the history of his campaigns when he passed in March, and it might interest you; it's our modern raid, and although it's not so picturesque as a foray of the Macphersons, yet it has points, and shows the old spirit lives. "'She wass a goot woman, Janet Cameron, oh yes, Mr. John, a fery exercised woman, and when she wass dying she will be saying peautiful things, and one day she will be speaking of a little field she had beside the church. "'"What do you think I should be doing with that piece of ground," she will be saying, "for the end iss not far off, and it iss not earth I can be taking with me, oh no, nor cows." "'"No, Janet," I said, "but it iss a nice field, and lies to the sun. It might be doing good after you are gone, if it wass not wasted on your mother's cousins twice removed in Inverness, who will be drinking every drop of it, and maybe going to the Moderate Kirk." "'It wass not for two months or maybe six weeks she died, and I will be visiting her every second day. Her experiences were fery good, and I hef told them at sacraments in the north. The people in the south are free with their money, but it iss not the best of my stories that I can give them; they are too rich for their stomachs. "'Janet will often be saying to me, "Mister Dugald, it iss a thankful woman that I ought to be, for though I lost my man in the big storm and two sons in the war, I hef had mercies, oh yes. There wass the Almighty and my cow, and between them I hef not wanted, oh no: they just did." "'"Janet, you will be forgetting your field that iss lying next the manse, and the people will be thinking that it iss a glebe; but I am telling them that it iss Janet Cameron's, who iss a fery experienced woman, and hass nefer seen the inside of a Moderate Kirk since the Disruption." "'Maybe you will be astonished, Mister John, but when Janet's will will be read that piece of ground wass left to the Free Kirk, which wass fery kind and mindful of Janet, and I made a sermon about her from the text of the "elect lady."