were conscious of the deficiency in courage which you seem
willing enough to impute to me. However, I suppose, this
ungracious hint proceeds from sincere anxiety for my safety; and
so viewing it, I swallow it as I would do medicine from a
friendly doctor, although I believed in my heart he had mistaken
my complaint.

This offensive insinuation disposed of, I thank thee, Alan, for
the rest of thy epistle. I thought I heard your good father
pronouncing the word Noble House, with a mixture of contempt and
displeasure, as if the very name of the poor little hamlet were
odious to him, or as if you had selected, out of all Scotland,
the very place at which you had no call to dine. But if he had
had any particular aversion to that blameless village and very
sorry inn, is it not his own fault that I did not accept the
invitation of the Laird of Glengallacher, to shoot a buck in what
he emphatically calls 'his country'? Truth is, I had a strong
desire to have complied with his lairdship's invitation. To
shoot a buck! Think how magnificent an idea to one who never
shot anything but hedge-sparrows, and that with a horse-pistol
purchased at a broker's stand in the Cowgate! You, who stand
upon your courage, may remember that I took the risk of firing
the said pistol for the first time, while you stood at twenty
yards' distance; and that, when you were persuaded it would go
off without bursting, forgetting all law but that of the biggest
and strongest, you possessed yourself of it exclusively for the
rest of the holidays. Such a day's sport was no complete
introduction to the noble art of deer-stalking, as it is
practised in the Highlands; but I should not have scrupled to
accept honest Glengallacher's invitation, at the risk of firing a