Well, now, supposing you are far away up on Ben Clebrig’s slopes, a gun over your shoulder, and idly looking out for a white hare or a ptarmigan, if you take to humming these careless rhymes to some such tune as ’Cherry Ripe,’ who is to hinder? The strongest of all the south winds cannot carry the tidings to Glengask nor yet to Orosay’s shores. And so the whole country-side—every hill and stream and wood and rock—came to be associated with Meenie, and saturated with the praise and glory of her. Why, he made the very mountains fight about her! _Ben Loyal spake to Ben Clebrig,_ _And they thundered their note of war:_ _’You look down on your sheep and your sheepfolds;_ _I see the ocean afar._ _’You look down on the huts and the hamlets,_ _And the trivial tasks of men;_ _I see the great ships sailing_ _Along the northern main.’_ _Ben Clebrig laughed, and the laughter_ _Shook heaven and earth and sea:_ _’There is something in that small hamlet_ _That is fair enough for me—_ _’Ay, fairer than all your sailing ships_ _Struck with the morning flame:_ _A fresh young flower from the hand of God—_ _Rose Meenie is her name!’_ But at this moment, as he turned over this mass of scraps and fragments, there was one, much more audacious than the rest, that he was in search of, and when he found it a whimsical fancy got into his head. If he were to make out a fair copy of the roughly scrawled lines, and fold that up, and address it to Meenie, just to see how it looked? He took out his blotting-pad, and selected the best sheet of note-paper he could find; and then he wrote (with a touch of amusement, and perhaps of something else, too, in his mind the while) thus— _O wilt thou be my dear love?_ _(Meenie and Meenie),_ _O wilt thou be my ain love?_ _(My sweet Meenie),_ _Were you wi’ me upon the hill,_ _It’s I would gar the dogs be still,_ _We’d lie our lane and kiss our fill,_ _(My love Meenie)._ _Aboon the burn a wild bush grows_ _(Meenie and Meenie),_ _And on the lush there blooms a rose_ _(My sweet Meenie);_ _And wad ye tak the rose frae me,_ _And wear it where it fain would be,_ _It’s to your arms that I would flee,_ _(Rose-sweet Meenie!)_ He carefully folded the paper and addressed it outside—so: _Miss Wilhelmina Stuart Douglas,_ _Care of James Douglas, Esq., M.D.,_ _Inver-Mudal,_ _Sutherlandshire._ And then he held it out at arm’s length, and regarded it, and laughed, in a contemptuous kind of way, at his own folly. ’Well,’ he was thinking to himself, ’if it were not for Stuart of Glengask, I suppose the day might come when I could send her a letter like that; but as it is, if they were to hear of any such madness, Glengask and all his kith and kin would be for setting the heather on fire.’