Two pawky tradesmen of the district were pacing up and down the platform in earnest talk, and as they passed me I caught this one sentence, torn from its context: “Should I outlive my wife, as I hope to do----” said the elder to the younger, and then they passed out of hearing. What was to follow on the realisation of this fond dream I have often longed to know, but even as the statement stands I have always thought it forms a notable monument to the caution and foresight of the race. There are several picturesque sayings of the Highlanders that come back to me as connected with these annual excursions. We had been staying for a few days at the little inn at Luib, situated about five miles from Loch Dochart, where we went daily to fish, and the gillie who used to row us on the loch had many a pleasant story to tell of his working days in the years when he had followed the calling of a shepherd. I remember one evening, as we walked home with our faces turned to one of those beautiful sunsets that I think are only to be seen in the Highlands, he was telling us of a favourite sheep-dog that had been for years his companion on the hills. But the time came when age unfitted the poor animal for his work, and when the only kindness in the shepherd’s eyes was to put an end to its life. And then he described how he had tied it to an apple-tree and got his gun to shoot it. “An’ I could scarce look at the beast,” he said, “as I fired, for I loved him well and he had been sae wise.” The tears rolled down his cheeks as he told the story, and we paused in our talk as we trudged along the sun-lit road. Then out of the silence came this further utterance: “I buried him,” he faltered, “at the foot of the apple-tree”--and then another pause, and then the final words--“an’ there would be a rare crop of apples on the tree the year, for there’s naething for an apple-tree like a dead dog.” This anecdote has always seemed to me characteristic of the Highland nature where poetry and prose lie closely side by side, and where the simple mind that holds them both is quite unconscious of any shock of feeling in the rapid transition from one to the other. In this respect I think they show a close resemblance to the peasants of Northern Italy, in whom there is this same frank avowal of swiftly changing feeling; and neither in the one nor in the other does there seem to occur the need, always felt by the Englishman, of forming a bridge of sentiment from the world of fact to the world of passion.