CHAPTER VI.
A PLEASAUNCE.
The General read Morning Prayers in brief, omitting the Psalms and lessons, and then after breakfast, with much gossip and ancient stories from Donald, the father and daughter went out to survey their domain, and though there be many larger, yet there can be few more romantic in the north.

That Carnegie had a fine eye and a sense of things who, out of all the Glen--for the Hays had little in Drumtochty in those days--fastened on the site of the Lodge and planted three miles of wood, birch and oak, and beech and ash, with the rowan tree, along the river that goes out and in seven times in that distance, so that his descendants might have a fastness for their habitation and their children might grow up in kindly woods on which the south sun beats from early spring till late autumn, and within the sight and sound of clean, running water.

No wonder they loved their lonely home with tenacious hearts, and left it only because it was in their blood to be fighting.

They had been out at Langside and Philiphaugh, in the '15 and the '45, and always on the losing side.

The Lodge had never been long without a young widow and a fatherless lad, but family history had no warning for him--in fact, seemed rather to be an inspiration in the old way--for no sooner had the young laird loved and married than he would hear of another rebellion, and ride off some morning to fight for that ill-fated dynasty whose love was ever another name for death.
There was always a Carnegie ready as soon as the white cockade appeared anywhere in Scotland, and each of the house fought like the men before him, save that he brought fewer at his back and had less in his pocket.
Little was left to the General and our Kate, and then came the great catastrophe that lost them the Lodge, and so the race has now neither name nor house in Scotland, save in the vault in Drumtochty Kirk.