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Then the General and Kate sat down by the river edge, and he told her the deathless story, how in the plague of 1666 they fled to this district to escape infection; how a lover came to visit one of them and brought death in his kiss; how they sickened and died; how they were laid to rest beside the Tochty water; and generations have made their pilgrimage to the place, so wonderful and beautiful is love.

"The last stage now, Kit; in less than two hours we'll see Tochty woods. The very thought makes me a boy again, and it seems yesterday that I kissed your mother on the door-step of the old lodge and went off to the Crimean war. "That's Muirtown Castle over there in the wood a grand place in its way, but nothing to our home, lassie.

The story grew as it passed westwards, and when it reached us we were given to understand that the Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie had come to his parish with his clothing in a paper parcel and twenty-four packing cases filled with books, in as many languages half of them dating from the introduction of printing, and fastened by silver clasps and that if Drumtochty seriously desired to hear an intellectual sermon at a time, we must take our way through Tochty woods.

Drumtochty Manse lay beneath the main road, so that the cold wind blowing from the north went over its chimneys, and on the east it was sheltered by the Tochty woods.

Upon the opposite side Hillocks stood to give directions by word and hand, as the ford was on his land, and none knew the Tochty better in all its ways. They passed through the shallow water without mishap, save when the wheel struck a hidden stone or fell suddenly into a rut; but when they neared the body of the river MacLure halted, to give Jess a minute's breathing.

The Doctor met Posty in the avenue, the finest bit on our main road, where the road has wide margins of grass on either side, and the two rows of tall ancient trees arch their branches overhead. Some day in the past it had been part of the approach to the house of Tochty, and under this long green arch the Jacobite cavaliers rode away after black John Carnegie's burial.

"A wud tell the daidlin', thowless, feckless, fushionless wratch o' a cratur tae watch for the first spate and droon himsel' in the Tochty." "What's he aff through the graves for in sic a hurry?" and Jamie followed Charlie's retreating figure with a glance of admirable amazement; "thae's no very gude mainners he's learned in Americky."

Four times they left the road and took their way over fields, twice they forced a passage through a slap in a dyke, thrice they used gaps in the paling which MacLure had made on his downward journey. "A' seleckit the road this mornin', an' a' ken the depth tae an inch; we 'ill get through this steadin' here tae the main road, but oor worst job 'ill be crossin' the Tochty.

"Ah, how this desiderium, as the Rabbi would have said, comes over one with the seasons as they come and go. In spring they send me the first snowdrops from the Glen, but it is a cruel kindness, for I want to be where they are growing in Clashiegar den. When summer comes people praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have not seen Tochty woods in their glory.

Tochty Lodge was of the fourth period of Scottish castellated architecture, and till it fell into disrepair was a very perfect example of the sixteenth century mansion-house, where strength of defence could not yet be dispensed with, for the Carnegies were too near the Highland border to do without thick walls or to risk habitation on the ground floor.