The dredgie I willingly pass over, and would as willingly commit to oblivion; for I may safely assert that, of four hundred men who were in the tower, not one was sober when the morrow dawned; and not less than two hundred gallons of mountain whisky were consumed as a libation in my mother's honour. Happily there was no fighting, but only a blow with a dirk and a slash with an axe exchanged between a M'Farquhar and a Rollo of Thanesland, about precedence at table. After six years of a quiet life at King's College, being somewhat unused to our Highland manners, I was scared by this terrible debauch; for, amid it all, I saw by the hall fire, a chair which stood vacant, and there seemed to be ever before me that black coffin, with its gilded handles and armorial blazon--the wreath of rosemary and the hour-glass on its lid--the deep dark grave yawning horribly, in the red light of the torches, that had glared on the groined vaults of the ancient kirk. On the morning after the dredgie, leaving the hall encumbered by more than four hundred armed Celts, who, in their plaids, were sleeping and snorting on the floor, I walked forth from the tower to ruminate, and view again the old familiar scenery from which I had so long been absent. Rising in his full refulgence from the sea, the morning sun was soaring high above the noble Firth of Cromartie, and no prospect that I have since beheld, (and in my wandering life I have looked on many,) can compare, in my estimation, with the wild mountain shores of my own native bay. Its entrance is by two steep and lofty hills named the Sutors, which are covered with wood, and overhang the water about a mile apart; between these natural towers, as between the piers of a floodgate, the morning sun poured all his splendour on the Firth, which at my feet spread out for seventeen miles in length, until it vanished in the deep bosom of the Ross-shire mountains, and those of the Black Isle. It is the grandest bay in Britain, and after experience has shewn me, that, if its promontories were fortified by cannon, there is no place wherein our Scottish ships could ride with greater security. In pure white haze the morning mists were rising from the pine-covered glens, and the fishermen were putting forth their nets upon the Firth, which was dotted by the brown sails of their little craft. The sky was cloudless, and the waters of Crom Ba (the winding bay) slept like a sheet of polished gold and crystal blue, at the base of its steep green bordering mountains. I sought M'Farquhar's Bed, a large and rocky cavern which lies below the southern Sutor of Cromarty. It had been a favourite haunt of mine in boyhood; for there an ancestor, Doughal Glass, had once found shelter and concealment, after having slain an Urquhart of Cromartie by a blow of his dirk in a sudden quarrel.