The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

324
The HigJdand Monthly.
die. By my blood and the grave, I swear to have
" Christopher Walsh."
Revenge !
" That is terrible, father. Who was this Walsh, and
what was the cause of the quarrel ?"
" Ah, that is the story, the story of my first and only
duel."
" A duel !"
" It surprises you, sonny ; and I don't wonder, for I
really think nobody vvould believe that the quiet going
laird of Stuart was such a hot-headed scapegrace in his
young days."
" I think I can guess the cause—this Walsh was a rivals
will I say, for my mother's affections."
" Well guessed—and the most inveterate and disagree-
able wooer that was ever invented, to use a colloquialism.
But I had better tell you the story from the beginning."
" Pray do, though I feel as if I had read the conclusion
and the moral of it already."
" As you may see from that picture above your head,,
your mother was a beautiful woman."
" And even more beautiful in character," added David^
rising and contemplating the picture with some display of
feeling. " Poor, dear mother."
" There was not a lass to approach her in all Moray
when first I knew Miss Jessie Macleod—second eldest in a
family of four; all daughters. She had many admirers and
y/ould-be husbands, foremost among them this Christopher
Walsh, who had been sent over from Ireland to learn,
farming, for which he was ill-fitted and less disposed. In a
worldly way, there was not much to choose between us.
He came of an Irish family, old and impecunious. I
was then the second son, with little expectation of being
called as my father's successor. But Richard, poor fellow
met a sudden death in an English hunting field. I was
then in Moray on the same business as Walsh—farming,
for which I have what may be termed an hereditary fancy^
His death was a terrible shock—but never mind that.