204 A HUNDEED YEARS 



trouble previously, and as I, a doctor, was at hand 

 should any help be needed, she and Frank had no fear 

 of danger. But a week before the time when I was 

 told to be at hand,, as I was riding along the rough track 

 by Loch Maree to Tigh Dige, I met Kennedy, the 

 gardener, riding with such a dreadful face of woe that 

 I hardly needed to ask for Kythe. Alas ! she had gone 

 to heaven the previous day. A dear little girl had come 

 ten days too soon. Then, as Frank was quite unable 

 even to think of any arrangements, I fixed the invitations 

 for friends to meet us at Conon and go thence to Beauly 

 to a very different funeral compared with the one I 

 have already noted. As we had no wheel roads nearer 

 than Kenlochewe, I decided on carrying the body 

 shoulder high from Gairloch to Beauly, willing hands 

 being more than plenty. I sent out word all over the 

 parish for men between twenty and thirty to attend at 

 the Tigh Dige on Monday evening ready to help us to 

 Conon next morning, and I had quite a thousand 

 from whom to choose the five hundred I wanted, 

 those who were not chosen being anything but 

 pleased. 



" So I picked out four companies of one hundred and 

 twenty -five strong men, made them choose their four 

 captains, and explained clearly to them all the arrange- 

 ments. I was to walk at the coffin foot and Frank 

 at the head all the way to Beauly, resting the first night 

 at Kenlochewe and the next night at Conon, say twenty- 

 four miles the first day and forty the second; the third 

 day we were to reach Beauly and return to Conon, say 

 nine miles. I sized the companies equally, the men in 



