400 NIMHOD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



Sunday, or, had I weighed sixteen stone with my saddle, which the 

 worthy factor does, the having been all the morning on the back of a 

 horse with fox-hounds, and then putting him into a gig, to draw me 

 seven or eight miles to a good dinner, and back again, at night, as the 

 worthy factor did this day ?" I think I should mosiy^n^ lest the ghost 

 of the old grey horse might rise up and accuse me. *' Funeris, heu ! 

 tibi causa fui?" was a question once put in the shades below. 



But whilst speaking of the gong, which is the summons to dinner in 

 most of the principal mansions in the north, I am reminded of an anec- 

 dote that Mr. John Grant, of Kilgraston, told me of a scene which took 

 place at his house. It happened that two new female servants arrived 

 on the same morning, and were together in their chamber when the 

 gong announced dinner. Never before having heard such an outlandish 

 sound — and there certainly is something striking, if not awful, in the 

 long and deep swelling notes of this gong while ascending from the 

 bottom to the top of a large house, and increasing as they ascend — they 

 both mistook it for the " last trump," and were found in hysterics on 

 the floor. 



Sunday, March 1. — This being a dies non in a sportsman's chronicle, 

 I have very little to say of it. We passed an hour or two in the kennel 

 and stables; visited the neat residence of John Arber; and Abercairney 

 comforted me by telling me the piper never played on Sundays. I ex- 

 pressed no surprise at that after what had been said of the curling 

 match ; and, moreover, from the recollection of the fact that, in the days 

 of the covenanters, the sacrament was refused to a man who danced with 

 his face toward a woman, and also to a woman who pulled kail, or 

 scraped a potato on the sabbath ! 



