Oor ain folk times

GRAIG-MA-SKELDIE 25
of Inchgrundle. The Duke possibly was not as good
an executant with the rifle as with the fiddle-bow. It
seems, at any rate, that after one or two misses, he
fired very widely at a small herd of deer some distance
away. Poor old Jeems, inly disgusted, but wishing to
be complimentary, observed, with a quaint confusion of
ideas as to the right title of His Eoyal Highness : ' Ay,
yer Richteousness ! but ye've pallached the snoots o'
thae yins.'
For many years the genial and eloquent Dr. Guthrie
— whose noble work in connection with the Ragged
School movement and whose marvellous pulpit oratory
made his name a household word all over Scotland in
the days of my youth, and whose memory even now is
kept green among the hills and glens where his stalwart
figure was so often a conspicuous object — used to
spend part of his summer holidays ' up the Glen.' He
generally took up his head-quarters with Jeems and his
good wife Betty.
Jeems's house and farm-steading lay in a snug corner
under the sheltering shade of the beetling cliff which
was known locally as The Craig-ma-skeldie. Amid the
almost inaccessible craggy fissures the golden eagle had
his eyrie, and sometimes the cragsmen would be let
down the face of the cliff to do battle with the royal
bird, when the young eaglets or the rare eggs had
become objects of desire to some of the sportsmen who
used to partake of Panmure's hospitality at the shooting-
lodge of Invermark across the loch. In front of the
farmhouse, known as ' Inchgrundle,' stretched the lovely
loch. Its waters lay clear and cool, shadowed by
mighty hills on all sides, reflecting in the still, sheltered