For a man of acknowledged and undoubtedly good family, Sir Ranald had rather eccentric ideas of ancestry and the value thereof. He did not certainly, like the Duke d'Aremberg or Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, claim kindred with the antediluvians, nor even carry his genealogy back to the dim days of Gadifer, King of Scotland, of whom it is recorded in that most veracious record _Le Grand Chronique de Bretagne_, that with Perceforest, King of Brittany, he sailed in company from the mouth of the Ganges, and was wrecked on the coast of Armorica; after which they were subsequently and severally raised to the thrones of Britain and Caledonia by their mutual friend Alexander le Gentil, in the time of Julius Cæsar; but he could solidly trace his descent from that Ranald Cheyne of Essilmont, Cairnhill, Craig and Inverugie, who was one of the barons that signed the _Litera Communitatis Scotiœ_ to Edward I. of England, about the marriage of their queen, the little Maid of Norway. Thus he had among his ancestors men who figured greatly in the troubles and wars of the olden time, who fenced with steel the throne of Robert I., who were ambassadors to England and France for David II. and the early James's, who shed their blood at Flodden Field and Pinkie Cleugh, at Sark and Ancrum Moor, and whose swords were ever ready when their country was in peril; and so, when he thought of these things, his proud spirit was apt to chafe, and at such times especially he was inclined to view with some contempt his friend Cadbury as a mushroom, being only a peer of yesterday, the second of his race, and for whom not even the ingenuity of the united College of Heralds could 'fudge' out a pedigree; but, for all that, the ample wealth of the latter was not without its due and solid weight in his estimation. Like more than one old northern family, the Cheynes of Essilmont were supposed--nay, were confidently alleged--to have a mysterious warning of death or approaching woe, such as the spectre drummer whose beat at Cortachy announces when fate is nigh the 'bonnie House of Airlie,' like the bell of Coull that tolls of itself when a Dorward dies, the hairy-handed Meg Moulach of the Grants, the headless horseman of Maclean, or the solitary swan that floats on a certain lake at times fatal to another race; and so the Cheynes of Essilmont were supposed to be haunted by a spectral black hound, in the appearance of which Sir Ranald strove to disbelieve in spite of himself, though its solemn baying had been heard when Ellon died in India and his mother in London; and as for old Archy Auchindoir, the family factotum, he believed in it as he did in his own existence.