424 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



reached about two o'clock, and took in one meal break- 

 fast and dinner. When I was a boy a few years older 

 than you I used to spend some of my holidays in the 

 neighbourhood of this place ; and being desirous to 

 revisit the localities with which I was so well acquainted 

 of old, I determined on passing a day or two in the 

 Lairg Inn. But I was told by the landlord that his 

 house was quite full, and that he could not accommodate 

 me. " I have a plaid of my own ; could you not give 

 me the use of a sofa ? " I asked. The landlord looked 

 at me, and then beckoned me into a corner. " Mr M., 

 you are a man of sense," he said. " All my bed-rooms 

 have been engaged for months by sporting gentlemen 

 from the South, and my public room is occupied chiefly 

 by their servants. The engaged rooms I cannot give 

 you ; and the servants are no company for you. Even 

 the very bed I can give you is in a double-bedded 

 room, occupied in part by Lord Grosvenor's valet. I 

 state to you the real case, while you are yet in time to 

 ride away by the mail to Golspie." I thanked the 

 landlord, who is really a very decent man, and deter- 

 mined that, as I have prosecuted my researches during 

 the last thirty years under great difficulties, the difficulty 

 of the servants in general, and of the valet in particular, 

 should not turn me back now. And so I took my 

 share of the double-bedded room. Papa thinks that his 

 status, such as it is, is that of the man of science, and 

 that it is so dependent on what he achieves for himself, 

 that it could not be improved by sleeping in the same 

 bed with a lord, nor yet depressed by going to bed in 

 the same room with a lord's valet. I had calculated on 

 attending church at Lairg ; the Tree Church is only a 

 few hundred yards from the inn, and though a rapid 

 river lies between, the late Mrs Mackay of Rockfield 



