obviously, while he professed to contemn the pedigree of his Highland
kinsman, attached a secret feeling of consequence to the connection, and
he spoke of his friend in his prosperity with an overflow of affection,
which deepened his sympathy for his misfortunes, and his regret for their
consequences.

"Thus tempted and urged by despair," said I, seeing Mr. Jarvie did not
proceed in his narrative, "I suppose your kinsman became one of those
depredators you have described to us?"

"No sae bad as that," said the Glaswegian,--"no a'thegither and outright
sae bad as that; but he became a levier of black-mail, wider and farther
than ever it was raised in our day, a through the Lennox and Menteith,
and up to the gates o' Stirling Castle."

"Black-mail?--I do not understand the phrase," I remarked.

"Ou, ye see, Rob soon gathered an unco band o' blue-bonnets at his back,
for he comes o' a rough name when he's kent by his ain, and a name that's
held its ain for mony a lang year, baith again king and parliament, and
kirk too, for aught I ken--an auld and honourable name, for as sair as it
has been worried and hadden down and oppressed. My mother was a
MacGregor--I carena wha kens it--And Rob had soon a gallant band; and as
it grieved him (he said) to see sic _hership_ and waste and depredation
to the south o' the Hieland line, why, if ony heritor or farmer wad pay
him four punds Scots out of each hundred punds of valued rent, whilk
was doubtless a moderate consideration, Rob engaged to keep them
scaithless;--let them send to him if they lost sae muckle as a single
cloot by thieving, and Rob engaged to get them again, or pay the
value--and he aye keepit his word--I canna deny but he keepit his