Mudie with the _conte_. It is one of two tales,
both told as true, which one would like to be able to narrate in the
language of Moliere. The other is also very good, and has a wonderful
scene with a corpse and a _chapelle ardente_, and a young lady; it is
historical, and of the last generation but one.
Even our frozen strath here has its modern legend, which may be told in
English, and out of which, I am sure, a novelist could make a good short
story, or a pleasant opening chapter of a romance. What is the
mysterious art by which these things are done? What makes the well-told
story seem real, rich with life, actual, engrossing? It is the secret of
genius, of the novelist's art, and the writer who cannot practise the art
might as well try to discover the Philosopher's Stone, or to "harp fish
out of the water." However, let me tell the legend as simply as may be,
and as it was told to me.
The strath runs due north, the river flowing from a great loch to the
Northern sea. All around are low, undulating hills, brown with heather,
and as lonely almost as the Sahara. On the horizon to the south rise the
mountains, Ben this and Ben that, real mountains of beautiful outline,
though no higher than some three thousand feet. Before the country was
divided into moors and forests, tenanted by makers of patent corkscrews,
and boilers of patent soap, before the rivers were distributed into
beats, marked off by white and red posts, there lived over to the south,
under the mountains, a sportsman of athletic frame and adventurous
disposition.
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