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'Is this Tochty Lodge? he asked, softening his voice as one trying to speak humbly. 'I am passing this way, and have a message for Mistress Carnegie; think you that I can have speech of her quietly? "So Mary will go up and tell the lady that one wass waiting to see her, and that he seemed a noble gentleman.
Perhaps it was not, therefore, remarkable that the arrival of Lord Kilspindie's groom at Tochty Lodge post haste with two letters on Saturday morning one for the General from his Lordship, and one from his son for Miss Kate should have been rightly interpreted, and the news spread with such rapidity that Hillocks a man not distinguished above his fellows for tact was able to inform Carmichael in the early afternoon that the marriage between the young lord and the "Miss" at Tochty was now practically arranged.
During that time the driver leant on the ledge, and let his eye run down the river, taking in the Parish Kirk above and settling on the Lodge, just able to be seen among the trees where the Tochty below turned round the bend. What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis.
But it was best to take your first view towards noon, for then you could trace the Tochty upwards as it appeared and reappeared, till it was lost in woods at the foot of Glen Urtach, with every spot of interest on either side.
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.
Degenerate descendants, anxious to obtain the maximum of speed with the minimum of exertion, have shown a quite wonderful ingenuity in circumventing hills, so the road between Drumtochty Manse and Tochty Lodge gate was duplicated, and the track that plunged into the hollow was now forsaken of wheeled traffic and overgrown with grass.
Perhaps he had done better to have come north in our spring-time, when nature, throwing off the yoke of winter, bursts suddenly into an altogether indescribable greenery, and the primroses are blooming in Tochty woods, and every cottage garden is sweet with wallflowers, and the birds sing of love in every wood, and the sower goes forth to sow.
Jeremiah was handed over to his anxious hosts at a quarter to one in the morning, covered with mud, somewhat fatigued, but in great peace of soul, having settled the place of election in the prophecy of Habakkuk as he came down with his silent companion through Tochty woods. Nor was that all he had done.
Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a little child. And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver, and at last is seen no more from the beeches. From the Tochty the eye makes its raids on north and south.
"There is the parish kirk of Drumtochty," as they came out and halted on the crest of the hill, "and though it be not much to look at after the Norman churches of the south, it's a brave old kirk in our fashion, and well set in the Glen." For it stood on a knoll, whence the ground sloped down to the Tochty, and it lay with God's acre round it in the shining of the sun.
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