He remained, therefore, contented with the highest
premium given to persons of his description, and
comforted himself with the hopes that few journeys
to England might enable him to conduct business
on his own account, in a manner becoming his
birth. For Robin Oig's father, Lachlan M`Combich,
(or _son of my friend_, his actual clan-surname
being M`Gregor,) had been so called by the celebrated
Rob Roy, because of the particular friendship
which had subsisted between the grandsire of
Robin and that renowned cateran. Some people
even say, that Robin Oig derived his Christian
name from one as renowned in the wilds of Lochlomond
as ever was his namesake Robin Hood, in
the precincts of merry Sherwood. ``Of such ancestry,''
as James Boswell says, ``who would not
be proud?'' Robin Oig was proud accordingly;
but his frequent visits to England and to the Lowlands
had given him tact enough to know that pretensions,
which still gave him a little right to distinction
in his own lonely glen, might be both obnoxious
and ridiculous if preferred elsewhere. The
pride of birth, therefore, was like the miser's treasure,
the secret subject of his contemplation, but
never exhibited to strangers as a subject of boasting.
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