“Ay, just that.  When he wass come back from the boat, he will say to me, ’Hamish, it is no more of me or my pipes they want at Dare, and I am going away; and they can get some one else to play the pipes.’  And I wass saying to him then, ’Donald, do not be a foolish lad; and if the English lady will not want the pibroch you made for her, perhaps at another time she will want it.’  And now, Sir Keith, it is Maggie MacFarlane; she wass coming up from Loch-na-Keal this afternoon, and who was it she will meet but our Donald, and he wass saying to her, ’It is to Tobermory now that I am going, Maggie; and I will try to get a ship there; for it is no more of me or my pipes they will want at Dare.’”

This was Hamish’s story; and the keen hawk-like eye of him was fixed on the English lady’s face all the time he spoke in his struggling and halting fashion.

“Confound the young rascal!” Macleod said, with his face grown red.  “I suppose I shall have to send a messenger to Tobermory and apologize to him for interrupting him to-day.”  And then he turned to Miss White.  “They are like a set of children,” he said, “with their pride and petulance.”

This is all that needs be said about the manner of Miss White’s coming to Dare, besides these two circumstances:  First of all, whether it was that Macleod was too flurried, and Janet too busy, and Lady Macleod too indifferent to attend to such trifles, the fact remains that no one, on Miss White’s entering the house, had thought of presenting her with a piece of white heather, which, as every one knows, gives good health and good fortune and a long life to your friend.  Again, Hamish seemed to have acquired a serious prejudice against her from the very outset.  That night, when Castle Dare was asleep, and the old dame Christina and her husband were seated by themselves in the servants’ room, and Hamish was having his last pipe, and both were talking over the great events of the day, Christina said, in her native tongue,

“And what do you think now of the English lady, Hamish?”

Hamish answered with an old and sinister saying: 

“A fool would he be that would burn his harp to warm her.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE GRAVE OF MACLEOD OF MACLEOD.

The monotonous sound of the waterfall, so far from disturbing the new guest of Castle Dare, only soothed her to rest; and after the various fatigues, if not the emotions, of the day, she slept well.  But in the very midst of the night she was startled by some loud commotion that seemed to prevail both within and without the house; and when she was fully awakened it appeared to her that the whole earth was being shaken to pieces in the storm.  The wind howled in the chimneys; the rain dashed on the window-panes with a rattle as of musketry; far below she could hear the awful booming of the Atlantic breakers.  The gusts that drove against the high house seemed ready