if it had been presented to him in a tea-cup.  He had already been prowling round the place with Mackenzie.  He had inspected the apparatus in the creek for hauling up the boats.  He had visited the curing-houses.  He had examined the heaps of fish drying on the beach.  He had drunk whisky with John the Piper and shaken hands with Alister-nan-Each.  And now he had come to tell Sheila that the piper was bringing down luncheon from Mackenzie’s house, and that after they had eaten and drunk on the white beach they would put out the Maighdean-mhara once more to sea, and sail over to Mevaig, that the stranger might see the wondrous sands of the Bay of Uig.

But it was not in consonance with the dignity of a king that his guests should eat from off the pebbles, like so many fishermen, and when Mairi and another girl brought down the baskets, luncheon was placed in the stern of the small vessel, while Duncan got up the sails and put out from the stone quay.  As for John the Piper, was he insulted at having been sent on a menial errand?  They had scarcely got away from the shore when the sounds of the pipes was wafted to them from the hillside above, and it was the “Lament of Mackrimmon” that followed them out to sea: 

  Mackrimmon shall no more return,
  Oh never, never more return!

That was the wild and ominous air that was skirling up on the hillside; and Mackenzie’s face, as he heard it, grew wroth.  “That teffle of a piper John!” he said with an involuntary stamp of his foot.  “What for will he be playing Cha till mi tuilich?”

“It is out of mischief, papa,” said Sheila—­“that is all.”

“It will be more than mischief if I burn his pipes and drive him out of Borva.  Then there will be no more of mischief.”

“It is very bad of John to do that,” said Sheila to Lavender, apparently in explanation of her father’s anger, “for we have given him shelter here when there will be no more pipes in all the Lewis.  It wass the Free Church ministers, they put down the pipes, for there wass too much wildness at the marriages when the pipes would play.”

“And what do the people dance to now?” asked the young gentleman, who seemed to resent this piece of paternal government.

Sheila laughed in an embarrassed way.

“Miss Mackenzie would rather not tell you,” said Ingram.  “The fact is, the noble mountaineers of these districts have had to fall back on the Jew’s harp.  The ministers allow that instrument to be used—­I suppose because there is a look of piety in the name.  But the dancing doesn’t get very mad when you have two or three young fellows playing a strathspey on a bit of trembling wire.”

“That teffle of a piper John!” growled Mackenzie under his breath; and so the Maighdean-mhara lightly sped on her way, opening out the various headlands of the islands, until at last she got into the narrows by Eilean-Aird-Meinish, and ran up the long arm of the sea to Mevaig.