100 NETHER LOCHABER. 



drift and snow, the heathcock of Ben Nevis dlapped his wings, and, 

 in a loud, prolonged, interrogative crow, addressed his first cousin 

 by the father's side, the heathcock of Ben Cruachan — ' How do 

 you feel yourself this morning, dear heathcock of Cruachan?' 

 ' So, so,' with a feeble attempt at wing-clapping, responded the 

 heathcock of Cruachan ; ' So, so ; miserable enough, believe me, 

 after such a night as last night was. And if I am thus miserable 

 down here, it only puzzles me to understand how you can at all 

 endure it, and live up there on Ben Nevis.' ' Thanks, my dear 

 fellow,' with a second vigorous clapping of his wings, quoth the 

 Ben Nevis bird ; ' Thanks, my dear fellow, for your kind and 

 cousinly solicitude for my welfare. Know this, however, that, bad 

 as it doubtless is up here on Ben Nevis, I am made to it.' " "We 

 can only suppose that our friends in Skye bear this prodigious rain- 

 fall with such philosophic equanimity and impunity because, like 

 the heathcock of Ben Nevis, they are " made to it." The first time 

 we heard this apologue was many years ago, in the cabin of one of 

 the Messrs. Hutcheson's steamers. A rubicund visaged drover — a 

 fine-looking man, of burly frame and Atlantean shoulders— had just 

 swallowed quite half-a-tumblerful of potent and unadulterated 

 "Talisker" at a gulp rather than a draught, when his parish 

 clergyman, who happened to be reclining on a sofa at the opposite 

 side of the cabin, got up and expostulated with his parishioner for 

 drinking ardent spirits in such a way as that; prophesying that 

 unless he stopped it very quickly it would kill him, and only 

 wondering that it had not killed him long ago. The drover, who 

 was not aware until then that his minister was on board, and a 

 witness to his potations, respectfully took oif his broad bonnet, and, 

 with a bow, begged to repeat the apologue, which he did, ore rntundo, 

 in the most beautiful Gaelic ; the application being so manifestly 

 apt and pertinent to his particular case that we all burst out 

 a laughing, the venerable clergyman — now, alas, no more ! — enjoying 



