At Aros, in Mull, lived Mr. Maxwell, the Duke of Argyll’s chamberlain, a person of note in his day and place, and a fine man at home. He traced his descent to a youth who had fled from the Border, all the way to Kintyre, before the soldiers of Claverhouse; and in his choice of reading (for one thing) he betrayed the Lowland strain. His daughter Agnes passed her early girlhood in Knapdale, where she was educated by old songs and ballads, and the rapture that was on the lonely shore. For the rest (not to speak of the inevitable finishing in Edinburgh), imagine Aros such another home school as Fiunary. The two houses stood facing each other on opposite sides of the Sound, and the minister’s son--Leander in a boat--married the chamberlain’s daughter. The eldest child of this pair, the third Norman, who may be called Norman the Great, was born in Campbeltown on June 3, 1812. From his earliest years he was remarkable for ardent affections, the eager interest he took in everything, and the humour and imagination with which he seized his little world. Talking and telling stories at the nursery fire, his tongue never lay. When only six he could mimic various characters of the town; and, later, he had an attic fitted up, in which he and his companions acted plays. For study he had no aptitude, and at the burgh school the classics were ill taught; but he entered with a will into the life of the boyish community, making passionate friendships, contending with the ‘shore-boys,’--those raiders of the playground,--and heading expeditions against the French, and chasing pirates in a punt. But his great delight as a boy was to visit the vessels at the quay; he would spend hours on board, learning the name and the use of everything, and consorting with the sailors,--all in a world of romance. Other savours of life on the ocean wave he had in society, which abounded in naval officers, some attached to the revenue cruisers, some ‘half-pays’ who had, perhaps, fought with Nelson. There also were two or three retired soldiers of distinction, and as many aristocratic spinsters (drifts from the county), living on their annuities, and the sheriff with his top-boots and queue. These, with several old families of the place, and the usual dignitaries of a burgh, were the quality; and, cut off as they were from the rest of the world (Campbeltown being then as an ocean isle for isolation), they make a quaint picture, like a set in some ancient novel. Norman mixed in this company, and the heroes of the services, and the queer old maids--he _saw_ them every one, and was glad. Not less did he mark the fishermen’s sons, with their ‘codlike faces and huge hands like flat-fish,’ or the fools and beggars that were the heroes of the streets. This varied and stirring experience, which was of inestimable account in the making of the man, fell in with the ideal of training that had been set at Fiunary.