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"I had a long talk with him before breakfast this morning," she said gayly, "and I know all about him. It appears that there are hundreds of him all McHulishes all along the coast and elsewhere only none of them ever lived ON the island, and don't want to.
"Oh, he wrote a most sensible letter," returned the lady, apparently mollified by the title of Watson's adviser, "saying that there was little doubt, if any, that if the American McHulishes wanted the old estate they could get it by the expenditure of a little capital. He offered to make the trial; that was the compromise they're talking about.
There was the loch and the hills and the heather; there were her flowers; did he not think they were growing well? and at the head of the loch there was the old tomb of the McHulishes, and some of the coffins were still to be seen.
Had a talk over it; saw an old Bible about as big and as used up as that," lifting the well-worn consular Bible, "with dates in it, and heard the whole story. And here we are." "And you have consulted no lawyer?" gasped the consul. "The McHulishes," said an unexpected voice that sounded thin and feminine, "never took any legal decision.
Why, he didn't even know that the McHulishes had no title." "Do you think he has been suffering under a delusion in regard to his relationship?" "No; he was only a fool in the way he wanted to prove it. He actually got these boys to think it could be filibustered into his possession. Had a sort of idea of 'a rising in the Highlands, you know, like that poem or picture which is it?
"It was a piece of girl and boy foolishness, anyway," she said. "Elsie and he were children together at MacCorkleville, second cousins, in fact, and I reckon he got her fancy excited over his nobility, and his being the chief of the McHulishes.
An elderly guest, who was examining a time-table on the wall, turned to them as the porter disappeared. "Ye'll be strangers noo, and not knowing that Tonalt the porter is a McHulish hissel'?" he said deliberately. "A what?" said the astonished Miss Elsie. "A McHulish. Ay, one of the family. The McHulishes of Kelpie were his own forebears. Eh, but he's a fine lad, and doin' well for the hotel."
"And do the owners, the McHulishes, permit this?" The porter looked at them with a puzzled, half-pitying politeness. He was a handsome, tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a certain naive and gentle courtesy of manner that relieved his strong accent, "Oh, ay," he said, with a reassuring smile; "ye'll no be troubled by THEM. I'll just gang away noo, and see if I can secure the teekets."
"Yes," continued Custer; "I oughter say the ONLY McHulish. He is the direct heir and of royal descent! He's one of them McHulishes whose name in them old history times was enough to whoop up the boys and make 'em paint the town red. A regular campaign boomer the old McHulish was. Stump speeches and brass-bands warn't in it with the boys when HE was around.
"And why should he na believe in his own kith and kin?" said Sir James, quickly, with a sudden ring in his voice, and a dialectical freedom quite distinct from his former deliberate and cautious utterance. "The McHulishes were chieftains before America was discovered, and many's the time they overran the border before they went as far as that.
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