He became at once very polite , and after trying to soften me for some time , but quite in vain , he cursed me once more in Gaelic and took himself off . I watched him striding along , through bog and brier , tapping with his stick , until he turned the end of a hill and disappeared in the next hollow . Then I struck on again for Torosay , much better pleased to be alone than to travel with that man of learning . This was an unlucky day ; and these two , of whom I had just rid myself , one after the other , were the two worst men I met with in the Highlands . At Torosay , on the Sound of Mull and looking over to the mainland of Morven , there was an inn with an innkeeper , who was a Maclean , it appeared , of a very high family ; for to keep an inn is thought even more genteel in the Highlands than it is with us , perhaps as partaking of hospitality , or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken . He spoke good English , and finding me to be something of a scholar , tried me first in French , where he easily beat me , and then in the Latin , in which I do n't know which of us did best . This pleasant rivalry put us at once upon friendly terms ; and I sat up and drank punch with him -LRB- or to be more correct , sat up and watched him drink it -RRB- , until he was so tipsy that he wept upon my shoulder . I tried him , as if by accident , with a sight of Alan 's button ; but it was plain he had never seen or heard of it . Indeed , he bore some grudge against the family and friends of Ardshiel , and before he was drunk he read me a lampoon , in very good Latin , but with a very ill meaning , which he had made in elegiac verses upon a person of that house . When I told him of my catechist , he shook his head , and said I was lucky to have got clear off . `` That is a very dangerous man , '' he said ; `` Duncan Mackiegh is his name ; he can shoot by the ear at several yards , and has been often accused of highway robberies , and once of murder . '' `` The cream of it is , '' says I , `` that he called himself a catechist . '' `` And why should he not ? '' says he , `` when that is what he is . It was Maclean of Duart gave it to him because he was blind . But perhaps it was a peety , '' says my host , `` for he is always on the road , going from one place to another to hear the young folk say their religion ; and , doubtless , that is a great temptation to the poor man . '' At last , when my landlord could drink no more , he showed me to a bed , and I lay down in very good spirits ; having travelled the greater part of that big and crooked Island of Mull , from Earraid to Torosay , fifty miles as the crow flies , and -LRB- with my wanderings -RRB- much nearer a hundred , in four days and with little fatigue . Indeed I was by far in better heart and health of body at the end of that long tramp than I had been at the beginning . CHAPTER XVI THE LAD WITH THE SILVER BUTTON : ACROSS MORVEN There is a regular ferry from Torosay to Kinlochaline on the mainland . Both shores of the Sound are in the country of the strong clan of the Macleans , and the people that passed the ferry with me were almost all of that clan .
The skipper of the boat , on the other hand , was called Neil Roy Macrob ; and since Macrob was one of the names of XXXXX 's clansmen , and Alan himself had sent me to that ferry , I was eager to come to private speech of Neil Roy .
Alan Ardshiel French Highlands Maclean Macleans Morven brier day murder