"Toots! toots!" said he; "ye have not enough confidence. I know twenty young men in Edinburgh and Glasgow who have painted every bit of Glencoe, from the bridge to the King’s House inn, and not one of them able to come near ye. Mind, I’m looking forward to showing your pictures to Tom Galbraith; I’m thinking he’ll stare!" The Laird chuckled again. "Oh, ay! he does not know what a formidable rival has come from the south; I’m thinking he’ll stare when he comes to Denny-mains to meet ye. Howard, what’s that down there?" The Laird had caught sight of a pink flower on the side of a steep little ravine, leading down to the shore. "Oh, I don’t want it; I don’t want it!" Mary Avon cried. But the Laird was obdurate. His nephew had to go scrambling down through the alders and rowan-trees and wet bracken to get this bit of pink crane’s-bill for Miss Avon’s bouquet. And of course she was much pleased; and thanked him very prettily; and was it catch-fly, or herb robert, or what was it? Then out of sheer common courtesy she had to turn to Angus Sutherland. "I am sure Dr. Sutherland can tell us." she says, timidly; and she does not meet his eyes. "It is one of the crane’s-bills, any way," he says, indifferently. "Don’t you think you had better return now, Miss Avon, or you will hurt your foot?" "Oh, my foot is quite well now, thank you!" she says; and on she goes again. We pass by the first cuttings of the slate-quarries; the men suspended by ropes round their waists and hewing away at the face of the cliff. We go through the long straggling village; and the Laird remarks that it is not usual for a Celtic race to have such clean cottages, with pots of flowers in the window. We saunter idly onwards, towards those great mountain-masses, and there is apparently no thought of returning. "When we’ve gone so far, might we not go on to the mouth of the pass?" she asks. "I should like to have a look even at the beginning of Glencoe." "I thought so," said the Laird, with a shrewd smile. "Oh, ay! we may as well go on." Past those straggling cottages, with the elder-bush at their doors to frighten away witches; over the bridge that spans the brawling Cona; along the valley down which the stream rushes; and this gloom overhead deepens and deepens. The first of the great mountains appears on our right, green to the summit, and yet so sheer from top to bottom that it is difficult to understand how those dots of sheep maintain their footing. Then the marks on him; he seems to be a huge Behemoth, with great eyes, grand, complacent, even sardonic in his look. But the further and further mountains have nothing of this mild, grand humour about them; they are sullen and awful; they grasp the earth with their mighty bulk below, but far away they lift their lurid peaks to the threatening skies, up there where the thunder threatens to shake the silence of the world.