'Come, piper,' said Angus, walking boldly into the room, somewhat surprised to see Buchanan there, but holding an outstretched hand to the piper; 'it iss not the first, nor the second, nor maybe the twentieth time I hef bed your hospitality, and I am thinking it will not pe the last time--and that without claiming it.' 'My name is Maister Cameron--Maister Cameron of Glen Heath, Maister Angus MacTavish! And apoot its peing the last time or not depends upon more consiterations than one!' The piper spoke with a sternness and pomposity of manner that made his visitor allow his hand to drop quickly to his side, and brought an indignant flush to the young face. 'What does it all mean?' said Angus in a bewildered way, turning to Maggie. Maggie stood behind her father's chair the personification of misery. The man of law sat looking stolidly before him with the most wooden of expressions on his pale face. 'It means,' said the piper in the same harsh sharp key, 'that _that_ is the door, that yonder is the road, that the quicker ye are there the petter it will pe for you, and the petter pleased too will all in this room pe.' 'Iss that it?' said Angus slowly, looking still at Maggie, and turning again towards the door. 'No, Angus, no! It iss not true that all in this room will pe petter pleased that ye should go. It iss not true!' burst out the girl in the fullness of her heart. 'But it _shall_ pe true!' shouted the piper, bringing his hand firmly down upon the table. Angus did not stay to argue the matter, but sorrowfully went his way. 'Stop that whining, Maggie--stop that foolish whining; I will not hef it!' said the piper, turning upon his daughter fiercely, who tried in vain to repress a sob as Angus disappeared. 'O Sandy Buchanan, it iss muckle that ye'll hef to answer for, if ye'll make me that I'll hate my own father too,' said the poor girl, storming out into open mutiny. 'Leave the room, Maggie!' cried the piper, waving his hand. The maiden gladly availed herself of her dismissal, and fled to the solitude of her own room. 'Cott has not gifen to women the brains to understand pusiness,' he continued, generalising apologetically to his guest. A week passed, and the piper's wrath against the clan MacTavish endured. The feud was not one-sided. Mr MacTavish replied to a letter full of nothing, expressed in the bitterest legal phraseology, written by Sandy Buchanan on the piper's behalf, by a document of elaborate counter-charges, written by the banker-lawyer of the town, breathing threatenings and lawsuits. And the case promised to be profitable to both of these astute gentlemen, as such cases generally manage to be. HINTS TO SICK-NURSES. Trying as are many, indeed we may truly say most of the duties of the sick-room, nothing renders them so much so as the fact that the disease under which the patient is suffering is of an infectious, or of a contagious nature.