Somewhat reluctantly the keeper obeyed this injunction, and for a minute or two seemed to be rather uncomfortable; but when he began to answer the questions concisely put to him with regard to the business before them, his shyness wholly wore away, for he was the master of this subject, not the stranger who was seeking for information. Into the details of these matters it is needless to enter here; and, indeed, so struck was the American with the talk and bearing of this new acquaintance that the conversation went far afield. And the farther afield it went, the more and more was he impressed with the extraordinary information and intelligence of the man, the independence of his views, the shrewdness and sometimes sarcasm of his judgments. Always he was very respectful; but in his eyes—which seemed singularly dark and lustrous here indoors, but which, out of doors and when he was after the wary stag, or the still more wary hinds, on the far slopes of Clebrig, contracted and became of a keen brownish gray—there was a kind of veiled fire of humour which, as the stranger guessed, might in other circumstances blaze forth wildly enough. Mr. Hodson, of Chicago, was entirely puzzled. A gamekeeper? He had thought (from his reading of English books) that a gamekeeper was a velveteen-coated person whose ideas ranged from the ale-house to the pheasant-coverts, and thence and quickly back again. But this man seemed to have a wide and competent knowledge of public affairs; and, when it came to a matter of argument (they had a keen little squabble about the protection tariffs of America) he could reason hard, and was not over-compliant. ’God bless me,’ Mr. Hodson was driven to exclaim at last, ’what is a man of your ability doing in a place like this? Why don’t you go away to one of the big cities—or over to America—where a young fellow with his wits about him can push himself forward?’ ’I would rather be "where the dun deer lie,"’ said he, with a kind of bashful laugh. ’You read Kingsley?’ the other said, still more astonished. ’My brother lends me his books from time to time,’ Ronald said modestly. ’He’s a Free Church minister in Glasgow.’ ’A Free Church minister? He went through college, then?’ ’Yes, sir; he took his degree at Aberdeen.’ ’But—but—’ said the newcomer, who had come upon a state of affairs he could not understand at all—’who was your father, then? He sent your brother to college, I presume?’ ’Oh no, sir. My father is a small farmer down the Lammermuir way; and he just gave my brother Andrew his wages like the rest, and Andrew saved up for the classes.’ ’You are not a Highlander, then?’ ’But half-and-half, like my name, sir,’ he said (and all the shyness was gone now: he spoke to this stranger frankly and simply as he would have spoken to a shepherd on the hillside). ’My mother was Highland. She was a Macdonald; and so she would have me called Ronald; it’s a common name wi’ them.’