They sat down, and, at a sign from his lordship, the servant placed his charge in Duncan's hands, and retired. The piper received the instrument with a proud gesture of gratification, felt it all over, screwed at this and that for a moment, then filled the great bag gloriously full. The next instant a scream invaded the astonished air fit to rival the skirl produced by the towzie tyke of Kirk-Alloway; another instant, and the piper was on his legs, as full of pleasure and pride as his bag of wind, strutting up and down the narrow chamber like a turkey-cock before his hens, and turning ever, after precisely so many strides, with a grand gesture and mighty sweep, as if he too had a glorious tail to mind, and was bound to keep it ceaselessly quivering to the tremor of the reed in the throat of his chanter.

Malcolm, erect behind their visitors, gazed with admiring eyes at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper : Malcolm regarded it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It was indeed

well that he could not see the expression upon the faces of those behind whose chairs he stood, while for moments that must have seemed minutes, they succumbed to the wild uproar which issued from those splendid pipes. On an opposite hill-side, with a valley between, it would have sounded poetic; in a charging regiment, none could have wished for more inspiriting battle-strains; even in a great hall, inspiring and guiding the merry reel, it might have been in place and welcome; but in a room of ten feet by twelve, with a wooden ceiling, acting like a drum-head, at the height of seven feet and a half! It was little below torture to the marquis and Lady Florimel. Simultaneously they rose to make their escape.

"My lord an' my leddy maun be gauin', daddy," cried Malcolm.

Absorbed in the sound which his lungs created and his fingers modulated, the piper had forgotten all about his visitors; but the moment his grandson's voice reached him, the tumult ceased; he took the port-vent from his lips, and with sightless eyes turned full on Lord Lossie, said in a low earnest voice,

"My lort, she 'll pe ta craandest staand o' pipes

she efer blew, and proud and thankful she'll pe to her lort marquis, and to ta Lort of lorts, for ta kift. Ta pipes shall co town from cheneration to cheneration to ta ent of time; yes, my lort, until ta loud cry of tem pe trownt in ta roar of ta trump of ta creat archanchel, when he'll pe setting one foot on ta laand, and ta other foot upon ta sea, and Clenlyon shall pe cast into ta lake of fire."

He ended with a low bow. They shook hands. with him, thanked him for his music, wished him good-night, and, with a kind nod to Malcolm, left the cottage.

Duncan resumed his playing the moment they were out of the house, and Malcolm, satisfied of his well-being for a couple of hours at least he had been music-starved so long, went also out, in quest of a little solitude.

VOL. I.

T

CHAPTER XXII.

WHENCE AND WHITHER?

HE wandered along the shore on the land side. of the mound, with a favourite old book of Scotish ballads in his hand, every now and then stooping to gather a sea-anemone-a white flower something like a wild geranium, with a faint sweet smell, or a small, short-stalked harebell, or a red daisy, as large as a small primrose; for along the coast there, on cliff or in sand, on rock or in field, the daisies. are remarkable for size, and often not merely tipped, but dyed throughout with a deep red.

He had gathered a bunch of the finest, and had thrown himself down on the side of the dune, whence, as he lay, only the high road, the park wall, the temple of the winds, and the blue sky were visible. The vast sea, for all the eye could tell, was nowhere-not a ripple of it was to be seen, but the ear was filled with the night gush and flow of it. A sweet wind was blowing, hardly blowing, rather gliding, like a slumbering river, from the west. The sun had vanished, leaving a ruin of gold and rose

behind him, gradually fading into dull orange and lead and blue sky and stars. There was light enough to read by, but he never opened his book. He was thinking over something Mr. Graham had said to him a few days before, namely, that all impatience of monotony, all weariness of best things even, are but signs of the eternity of our nature-the broken human fashions of the divine everlastingness.

"I dinna ken whaur it comes frae," said a voice above him.

He looked up. On the ridge of the mound, the whole of his dwarfed form relieved against the sky and looking large in the twilight, stood the mad laird, reaching out his forehead towards the west, with his arms expanded as if to meet the ever coming wind.

"Naebody kens whau. the win' comes frae, or whaur it gangs till," said Malcolm. "Ye're no a hair waur aff nor ither fowk, there, laird."

"Does't come frae a guid place, or frae an ill?" said the laird, doubtingly.

"It's saft an' kin'ly i' the fin' o' 't," returned Malcolm suggestively, rising and joining the laird