Pleasant indeed and full of happy prospects and activities was Glenbogle in spite of the rain. The Chieftain and his wife were contemplating the leave of their eldest son. The keepers and gillies and workmen were looking forward to the Gathering on August 28th. The children were practising reels and sword-dances for the great annual event with indefatigable zeal. The pipers were hardly ever silent in their resolve to defend the music of Glenbogle against all competitors. Murdoch and Iain MacDonald had proclaimed their intention of tossing the caber and putting the stone for the honour of Glenbogle’s muscles against whatever brawny outsiders should venture to challenge their power. Catriona and Mary MacDonald were volunteering to bicycle into Fort William at the slightest excuse to fetch extra yards of ribbons for rosettes. Carrie and Myrtle were driving over to Knocknacolly in the ten-h.p. Austin which Chester had bought in Inverness with the energetic Widow MacDonald who was scrubbing out some of the rooms, and also making expeditions to Fort William for various domestic articles. Chester Royde Jr. was much in the company of Kilwhillie, with whom he paid two or three visits to Inverness, the object of which was not divulged. Kilwhillie’s moustache under the effect of that unexpected extra £1,000 had to be tugged at continually to prevent its sweeping up like a cow’s horns and thus contravening what Kilwhillie considered the suitable habit of growth for a laird’s moustache.

The happy inhabitants of Glenbogle were as innocent as once upon a time the inhabitants of Glencoe that down in London an enemy was plotting their ruin.

Chapter 12

OUSE HALL

BRITISH DEMOCRACY HAS many glories, not the least of which is its ability to produce liberal-minded and progressive peers who instead of sulking about the burden of taxation get in touch with the people and keep in touch with the people. Such a peer was John Henry Charles Bunting, seventh Earl of Buntingdon, also Viscount Ouse and Baron Bunting of Buntingdon, of Ouse Hall, Buntingdon, Beds, and 201 Belgrave Square, S.W., the President of the National Union of Hikers. Many readers will be familiar with the photograph of Lord Buntingdon in shorts and shirt holding his hiker’s staff, his benevolently domed head hatless, liberty, equality and fraternity twined in the smile that wreathes his large melon-shaped face of the Rugby not Association type of melon. Underneath this representation one may here read, ‘Bachelor peer says everybody should hike,’ or ‘Earl says hiking is shortest cut to true democracy,’ or ‘Hundreds of hikers yesterday acclaimed the Earl of Buntingdon when he presided at the Annual Hikery held in the grounds of Ouse Hall, his picturesque Bedfordshire seat. Lord Buntingdon in thanking the members of the National Union of Hikers for again electing him as their President stressed the moral, mental and physical value of hiking in preventing Britain from becoming a C.3 nation.’