The tradition of the district has to be relied upon for the story. By this tradition it would appear that among the fugitives upon whose head a price was set, after Culloden, was the Marquis of Tullibardine, elder brother of the Duke of Athole. Being hard pressed by the search-parties which were everywhere scouring the country, this nobleman, it is said, betook himself to Buchanan of the Ross, with whom he had been upon terms of friendship, and besought temporary asylum. This favour Buchanan granted readily enough, and apparently in all good faith; but no sooner was the unfortunate refugee secure under his roof than he intimated the fact to the nearest military post. The natural consequence was an immediate visit of the soldiery and the arrest of the fugitive. Here the story becomes uncanny. The victim of misplaced confidence was being dragged across the threshold, when, it is said, recovering from surprise at the unheard-of treachery, his Highland rage and indignation reached the blazing point, and, turning upon his host, he hurled out the imprecation, “There’ll be Murrays on the braes of Athole when there’s ne’er a Buchanan at the Ross!” This was the last of the Marquis, so far as the district was concerned, but it was by no means, in the eyes of the dwellers there, the last of his “curse.” Strangely enough, and, whether in fulfilment of the fierce prophecy or not, only a few decades had passed when the race at the Ross, so far as the male line was concerned, actually died out, and, as if to complete the result, upon two occasions since then the estates have passed to other hands through female heirs. [Illustration] In the early decades of the present century the master of the place was an Edinburgh advocate, Mr Hector Macdonald, and under his hospitable roof again and again was entertained no less a guest than the author of “Waverley.” It is not difficult to understand, apart from the congenial society of his host, Scott’s attraction to the house. The natural beauty of the place, if nothing else, must have been a continual delight to one so keenly alive as he was to the interest of woodland and loch. The district around, the house itself, and the mountains before him, besides, were teeming with memories--every glen the home of a romance. In Ross Priory, at anyrate, he frequently stayed, and from the local legends and colour with which his residence supplied him he selected the materials for some of the most famous episodes in “Rob Roy” and “The Lady of the Lake.” The use he made of it, indeed, has invested the whole district with a new interest. All the neighbourhood, strath and glen, glows with the reflected splendour of his thought, a “light that never was on sea or land”; and with the clear wind blowing fresh from mountain and loch, something seems mingled of the wholesome mental health and vigour of the “Wizard’s” work.