In a shrill, high, querulous voice the piper, who was himself pulling one of the two stroke oars, began to sing, and then the men behind him, gathering courage, joined in an octave lower, their voices being even more uncertain and lugubrious than his own.  These poor fishermen had not had the musical education of Clan-Alpine’s warriors.  The performance was not enlivening, and as the monotonous and melancholy sing-song that kept time to the oars told its story in Gaelic, all that the English strangers could make out was an occasional reference to Jura or Scarba or Isla.  It was, indeed, the song of an exile shut up in “sea-worn Mull,” who was complaining of the wearisome look of the neighboring islands.

“But why do you sing such Gaelic as that, John?” said young Lavender confidently.  “I should have thought a man in your position—­the last of the Hebridean bards—­would have known the classical Gaelic.  Don’t you know the classical Gaelic?”

“There iss only the wan sort of Kallic, and it is a ferry goot sort of Kallic,” said the piper with some show of petulance.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know your own tongue?  Do you not know what the greatest of all the bards wrote about your own island?—­’O et praesidium et dulce decus meum, agus, Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine Styornoway, Arma virumque cano, Macklyoda et Borvabost sub tegmine fagi?’”

Not only John the Piper, but all the men behind him, began to look amazed and sorely troubled; and all the more so that Ingram—­who had picked up more Gaelic words than his friend—­came to his assistance, and began to talk to him in this unknown tongue.  They heard references in the conversation to persons and things with which they were familiar in their own language, but still accompanied by much more they could not understand.

The men now began to whisper awe-stricken questions to each other; and at last John the Piper could not restrain his curiosity.  “What in ta name of Kott is tat sort of Kallic?” he asked, with some look of fear in his eyes.

“You are not much of a student, John,” said Lavender carelessly, “but still, a man in your position should know something of your own language.  A bard, a poet, and not know the classical form of your own tongue!”

“Is it, ta Welsh Kallic?” cried John in desperation, for he knew that the men behind him would carry the story of his ignorance all over Borvabost.

“The Welsh Gaelic?  No.  I see you will have to go to school again.”

“There iss no more Kallic in ta schools,” said the piper, eagerly seizing the excuse.  “It iss Miss Sheila, she will hef put away all ta Kallic from ta schools.”

“But you were born half a century before Miss Sheila:  how is it you neglected to learn that form of Gaelic that has been sacred to the use of the bards and poets since the time of Ossian?”

There were no more quips or cranks for John the Piper during the rest of the pull home.  The wretched man relapsed into a moody silence and worked mechanically at his oar, brooding over this mysterious language of which he had not even heard.  As for Lavender, he turned to Mackenzie and begged to know what he thought of affairs in France.