MR MACLAREN loved Kintoul. Ever since he had come there, nigh on twenty years ago, the place had “grown on him,” as the saying goes. It had seemed a paradise of rest and quiet to the town-weary minister—a place where a man might regain health and strength of mind and body; where a man might forget the ugly striving and pushing of the city, and steep his very soul in the peace of God.
    It was, on the whole, an easy thing to fall in love with Kintoul. There was some­thing alluring about it, something myste­riously feminine. Even in the depths of winter, when the pure white snow covered all the hillside, hanging on the pine trees like fleecy blankets, and the river (the only non-white thing in the whole valley) ran like a narrow snake between jagged ice—even then there was something soft about Kintoul. The hills were friendly sentinels for all their rugged crests; the long dark nights were lighted by misted stars; the very snowflakes seemed to caress one’s cheek as they fell.

    The little village of Kintoul lies at the bottom of the picturesque valley to which it gives its name. It grew up round a castle—one of the strongholds of the lawless north—depending for sustenance and protection upon the bounty of its chieftain; rendering him fealty when required, and receiving in return some small and precarious benefits.
    “The old order changeth,” however, and the castle has long syne fallen into ruins. Its proud battlements are a moss-grown playground for the village children, its frown­ing towers are the haunt of the jackdaw; but the little village has now become old enough to fend for itself. It requires no patronage—nay, would bitterly resent anything approaching it—and continues through the years to drowse away its existence in the time-honoured manner of Highland villages.
    A river, treacherous in its varying size and power, lingers drowsily round the rock upon which the castle stands, and glides by the thatched cottages and cobbled street of the village, mirroring them and the sur­rounding pine trees on its darkly mysterious breast. Once past the village it wakes to life; a natural bar of rock breaks it into a score of silver ribbons, which fall with a soft roar into a pool some forty feet below. This pool is named the Giant’s Quaich, and it is well named, for when the churning foam is brown in spate it is like a vast bowl foaming and frothing with Brobdig­nagian beer.
    The sound of the waterfall comes softly to Kintoul—softly, but unceasingly. It is a cool, drowsy sound in summer, which lulls the village to sleep on many a warm, breathless night; but it is a loud roar in winter, frightening many a snugly bedded bairn into startled wakefulness.
    There is an old house, crooked and lichened with age, but mellow like a sun-ripened plum. It is set in trees, as a jewel is set, close by the river, and divided from the cobbled street of the village by a narrow garden, which in summer is full of bright flowers. The Boat House has belonged to the Kerrs for many generations. It is possessed of a large, roomy boat, and this fact has given the house its name. The boat is used as a ferry by the in­habitants of the village, and by others from far and near, for this is the only ferriable spot for many miles up and down that turbulent stream. Kintoul Ferry is justly famed for its safety in stormy weather, and for the reliable boatman with his broad-beamed craft. There are few days, even in the Highland winter, when John Kerr refuses to ferry a passenger across.
    On a warm day in summer the ferry is a drowsy spot, and it is difficult to imagine the wild scenes which must have taken place there. Mr Maclaren says that a book might be written full of wild and stirring tales and yet leave half the stormy history of Kintoul Ferry untold. He will wax eloquent on the subject; he will draw you to the window of his study, which overlooks his beloved river, and will conjure up reivers swimming their stolen herds on moonless nights, or a Lochinvar crossing here, with his noble steed carrying some fair lady of high degree. Here the fierce Macalpine and his raiders fought many a battle; here, also, came the ubiquitous Wade and his road-making army.
    If you have shown sufficient enthusiasm for his hobby, Mr Maclaren will turn to his desk (a battered but roomy piece of furni­ture which fills up a quarter of his small study) and will pull out drawer after drawer to exhibit queer pieces of steel and iron and bone found on the banks of the ferry. Holding these in his thin white hand, he will speak of fights and midnight raids till his old faded eyes blaze with excitement, and he has ruffled his thick white hair into warlike disarray. He is a keen antiquarian, and the good folk of Kintoul find it a strange but lovable eccentricity in their little minister; they like him all the better for what they call his madness. They bring him pieces of bone which they find by the river’s brink, and shake their heads wisely when they see the gleam in his eyes.
    Perhaps in the course of Mr Maclaren’s lecture his eye will fall upon the Boat House, and then he will pause and sigh, for, if his mind be in the past and his soul set on Heaven, his heart is most cer­tainly here with the people of his parish. If you have gained his confidence he will tell you a story about the Boat House, not a stirring tale of fighting and robbery, but a sad tale of a young girl’s mistake.
    Mary Simpson was a beautiful young girl, the daughter of Mr Maclaren’s predecessor at Kintoul Manse. She was an only child, lonely and high-spirited, and she fell in love with John Kerr of the Boat House. From her window in the manse she could see him venturing forth in all weathers, a romantic figure in his unenviable role of Charon. He was much older than she, but he was very handsome in the stern, rugged manner of the north. Tall and strong, battling with the river in its every phase, John Kerr soon filled her girlish dreams, and swept her off her feet before her parents were aware that anything was untoward. Mary’s head, which was full of Scott, and not very much else besides, was completely turned. She would not listen to her parents’ pleadings; nor, when pleadings failed, was she less deaf to their threats.
    The romantic haze through which Mary saw John Kerr was pitiably soon dissipated when, in defiance of her parents’ wishes, she married him. She found out her mistake when it was too late. They had nothing in common—scarcely a common language. The girl was terrified; she had spent all her life sheltered and protected from all knowledge of the world and its realities. Mary’s deli­cacies of feeling at first mystified the good John, and then bored him; they drifted apart. It was then that Mary began to realise the utter friendlessness of her posi­tion; there was not a creature to whom she could turn for a word of comfort or advice; it was almost incredible. She was neither fish nor flesh. Her own folk, with their narrow bigotry, had completely cast her off; the villagers looked at her askance. Perhaps if Mary had been less proud or less miserable she might have made friends, but as it was she suffered her loneliness in silence.
    John Kerr was good enough to his wife, but his lights were not brilliant; he was a dour Scot, thrifty to the point of meanness, and with the fierce respectability of his kind. Mary made him a dutiful wife and was a good mother to her three children, but there was no vitality in her. She died—if not of a broken heart, of a bruised one—when her youngest child, a daughter, was eight years old.
    There is more than that to the story of Mary Kerr, but you will never hear it from Mr Maclaren, though sometimes he will tell you how she died and show you the quiet grave, beautifully kept by the little daughter, in the green kirkyard on the hillside.
    “Well, well,” Mr Maclaren will say at last, looking at you over the top of his spectacles. “We all make mistakes sometimes, and she paid heavy enough for hers.” Or, if he thinks you look young and flighty, he will, perhaps, point a moral to the story of Mary Simpson, and draw your attention to the Fifth Commandment and its promise. Then, to make up for the lecture, he will lend you his favourite trout-rod, and, after a learned discourse on the rival merits of the “grey moth” and the “red spider,” he will send you forth, with his blessing, to work destruction amidst the finny population of the river.