A young French viscomte was fortunate enough to obtain in marriage the hand of a singularly pretty Scotch heiress of an old family and good fortune, who, amongst her other endowments, possessed a large old-fashioned house in a remote district of the highlands, where her ancestors had resided for centuries.  Thither the young couple repaired to pass their honeymoon; the enamoured bridegroom gladly availing himself of the opportunity to ingratiate himself with his new connexion, by adopting the seclusion he saw practised by the English on such occasions.  However consonant to our notions of happiness, and however conducive to our enjoyment this custom be—­and I have strong doubts upon the subject —­it certainly prospered ill with the volatile Frenchman, who pined for Paris, its cafes, its boulevards, its maisons de jeu, and its soirees.  His days were passed in looking from the deep and narrow windows of some oak-framed room upon the bare and heath-clad moors, or watching the cloud’s shadows as they passed across the dark pine trees that closed the distance.

Ennuyee to death, and convinced that he had sacrificed enough and more than enough to the barbarism which demanded such a “sejour,” he was sitting one evening listlessly upon the terrace in front of the house, plotting a speedy escape from his gloomy abode, and meditating upon the life of pleasure that awaited him, when the discordant twang of some savage music broke upon his ear, and roused him from his reverie.  The wild scream and fitful burst of a highland pibroch is certainly not the most likely thing in nature to allay the irritable and ruffled feelings of an irascible person—­unless, perhaps, the hearer eschew breeches.  So thought the viscomte.  He started hurriedly up, and straight before him, upon the gravel-walk, beheld the stalwart figure and bony frame of an old highlander, blowing, with all his lungs, the “Gathering of the clans.”  With all the speed he could muster, he rushed into the house, and, calling his servants, ordered them to expel the intruder, and drive him at once outside the demesne.  When the mandate was made known to the old piper, it was with the greatest difficulty he could be brought to comprehend it—­for, time out of mind, his approach had been hailed with every demonstration of rejoicing; and now—­but no; the thing was impossible—­there must be a mistake somewhere.  He was accordingly about to recommence, when a second and stronger hint suggested to him that it were safer to depart.  “Maybe the ‘carl’ did na like the pipes,” said the highlander musingly, as he packed them up for his march.  “Maybe he did na like me;” “perhaps, too, he was na in the humour of music.”  He paused for an instant as if reflecting—­not satisfied, probably, that he had hit upon the true solution—­when suddenly his eye brightened, his lips curled, and fixing a look upon the angry Frenchman, he said—­“Maybe ye are right enow—­ye heard them ower muckle in Waterloo to like the skirl o’ them ever since;” with which satisfactory explanation, made in no spirit of bitterness or raillery, but in the simple belief that he had at last hit the mark of the viscomte’s antipathy, the old man gathered up his plaid and departed.