"The Pot," as it is locally called, is a huge rocky cavern, irregularly circular and open to the sky, into which the sea rushes through a natural archway. A narrow pathway is left quite round the basin, from which one looks down a sheer descent of more than a hundred feet; but this is so dangerous, the earth and coarse grass that carpet it so deceptive and loose, and the wind almost always so high on this spot, that only the most foolhardy or youngest of visitors would dare in broad daylight to attempt to _walk_ round it. Yet it is on record that the duke of Richmond, some sixty or seventy years ago, made a bet at Lord Erroll's dinner-table that he would _ride round it after dark_. He accomplished the feat in safety. His picture, life-size, hangs in the dining-room to this day, and as he is represented standing in all the pride of a vigorous manhood by the side of his beautiful charger, he does not seem to belie the reputation which this incident created for him in the old district of Buchan. The peasants of this wild and primitive neighborhood, though to some extent slightly infected by modernization, are yet very fair specimens of the hardy, trusty clansmen of Scottish history, and the present owners of Slains certainly give them every reason to keep up the old bonds of affectionate interest with every one and everything belonging to "the family." To my own observation of the ancient seat of the Hays I owe one of the most delightful recollections of my life, that of a Christian home. Not only the outward observances, but the inner spiritual vitality of religion, were there, while unselfish devotion to all within the range of her influence or authority marked the character of her who was at the head of this little family kingdom. The present head of the house, a Hay to the backbone, has triumphantly carried on the martial traditions of his ancestry, and on the roll of England's victorious sons at the battle of the Alma his name is to be found. He was there disabled by a wound that shattered his right arm and cut short his military career. Domestic happiness, however, is no bad substitute for a brilliant public life, and there are duties, higher yet than a soldier's, that go far toward making up that background of rural prosperity which alone ensures the grand effect of military successes. After having done one's duty in the field, it is to the full as noble, and perhaps more patriotic, to turn to the duties of the glebe, thereby finishing as a landlord the work begun as a soldier. It is a touching custom, hardly yet obliterated in the district over which my reminiscences have led me, for one peasant, when coming upon another employed in his lawful calling, thus to salute him: "Guid speed the wark!" the rejoinder being, in the same broad Buchan dialect, "Thank ye: I wish ye weel."