Honestly, I don’t think I have been unfair to the Macgregors, who managed to earn among their neighbours an ill-fame, which they have redeemed by indomitable loyalty to their name. But for any slip of respect towards this clan, one can best make amends by telling its story at more length, with the help of Miss Murray Macgregor’s goodly quartos and other _mémoires pour servir_ that are not much in the way of the general reader. Such a story may need a good deal of boiling down to make porridge for that hasty reader’s taste. At the best, it must be a story too much coloured by the vivid red and black chequers of the clan tartan; and if any Macgregor look dark at what I have to tell, let me repeat what I said in the former sketch, that this name seems to have been more unlucky but not more guilty than others that wear their stains and glories in a less striking pattern. The great author, to whose sympathy they owe most renown, goes a little farther in commentating on their history--“The tricks of a bear that is constantly baited can neither be expected to be innocent nor entertaining.” It has been already pointed out in _Bonnie Scotland_ how this clan clearly stood as models for the Vich Alpines of Scott’s _Lady of the Lake_. They claim to be sons of Alpin, as descended from King Girig, Gregor, or Gregory, the heir of Kenneth MacAlpin, though his sonship seems a disputed point. At a very early period is found widely settled in the heart of Scotland a race claiming to be united by royal blood, their traditional descent not at first stereotyped in name. As yet, the Highlanders’ surnames sat as loosely as their garments: a man’s Christian name was supplemented rather by the name of his father, or by some agname taken from personal appearance or position. This clan shot out branches that might come to be known by other patronymics, the Macnabs, “sons of the Abbot”; the Grants, said to be descended from one Gregor _graund_, that is “the ill-favoured”; the Griersons, whose name suggests such descent; and the same origin is ascribed to the Mackays, the Mackinnons, and others, who may perhaps claim for themselves some still bluer blood of Adam. Of course there would be a good deal of miscegenation through the accidents of love and war; a small broken stock might be adopted into a more powerful one, with or without a change of name, and a Highland heiress might bring for her dowry not only cows but a tail of kinsmen to be adopted into her husband’s clan; then even mere Lowlanders have no doubt been absorbed as captives, runaways, or masters of useful arts. The Comanche Indians, it is said, have as much adulterated white as red blood in them; the Creeks and Seminoles were recruited by negro slaves; and the Tuscaroras were admitted bodily into the Iroquois League. A Highland clan of old days was in much the same social state as a Red Indian tribe. Often also a family interlaced itself with congenial neighbours by the exchange of