The "Seventeen-Forty-Five," with the "Standard on the Braes o' Mar . . . up and streamin' rarely" for Bonnie Prince Charlie, saw fiery times in those remote parts, and knew times of dule afterwards, and the difficulty about any authentic tale of events, is that, in its passage down time, from mouth to mouth, it necessarily loses immediacy of phrase, even of fable, and that rude frame of living and loving, fighting and dying, in which it was originally set. But human nature does not change, we only think it does in changed circumstances, and if Jock Farquharson, of Inverey, could return from the Hills of Beyond and read our chronicle of himself and others, why, he might recognize it, which would mean, perhaps, that some of the romantic colour, the dancing atmosphere, and the high spirit of adventure of those ancient years, has been saved from them. It was little he did not know about the gallantries and the intrigues of war-making and love-making, holding them the natural occupations of a Highland gentleman, even when he had become a "broken man" and an "outlaw"; as you may now, if you please, go on to learn, with many other things of surprise, diversion and quality. J. M. THE CALEDONIAN CLUB, LONDON, _Midsummer Day_, 1921. THE BLACK COLONEL _I--We Meet in the Pass_ We might have gone by each other in the Pass, the Black Colonel and I, if his horse had not kicked a stone as we came together. It struck my foot and then a rock, making a rattle in the dark night. You know how noise gains when you cannot see the cause of it, and all your senses are in your ears. "Woa, Mack!" said the Black Colonel to his beast; "can't you stand still with those mettlesome legs of yours? You may," he went on, more to himself than to the horse, "need them to-night, for our friend, Captain Ian Gordon of his Hanoverian Majesty's forces, is late, and when a man is late it generally bodes trouble; for a woman anyhow, I might confess from my experience. It is less matter if a woman be late, because it is a fashion with the sweet sex that you should wait upon it, and I am always willing to oblige out of my own warmth in gallantry, or so folk say. Eh! Mack? Kept you waiting at many a gate, have I, forgetful that it was cold outside?" The Black Colonel and I had met before, though slightly, distantly, and I knew his habit of talking to his horse. Not an unnatural thing, because Mack was an animal of fine intelligence, coupled, it is true, with the stallion's devil of a temper, and they had spent much time alone together, which begets understanding. Were they, indeed, not a romance of the countryside, inseparable, with a friendship only found between a lonely man and his horse or his dog? They had been through a whole chapter of adventures together, and were willing to face more, or they would not have been there in the Pass.