"Was it the singular plaintiveness of this beautiful air, I wonder, or was it that my thoughts were away back again in the glen I had left, and with those I loved so dearly? I do not know, but I seemed to become oblivious to everything. My very soul was breathed into the music; I was speaking and appealing to the crowd through the instrument. "The crowd! Yes, there was a crowd. I became aware of that as soon as I had finished, and money, piece after piece, was forced into my hand. I took the money. I felt ashamed of it next moment, but to have gone off then would have seemed ungrateful. I played still another air. Again I paused. "`No more money,' I cried aloud as I fled away. "They must have thought the Highland boy was mad. "Some time afterwards I found myself standing at a book-seller's window looking at a picture, a ship, a gallant ship in a gale of wind. "How I longed to be at sea then! How I hated the bustle and stir and talking and noise all round me! That splendid ship--the sea was wild and rough all around her, the spray dashing over her bows; there would be the roar of the wind through rigging and shroud, and the wild scream of sea bird rising high over the dash of the waves. She bore it well; the sheets were taut; the sails were rounded out and full. How I longed to be at sea! "A hand was laid on my shoulder. I started and looked up. No need to start. "A kindly face looked down into mine. "`You are in grief of some kind, my boy,' he said, this white-haired old gentleman. `Nay, don't be too proud to admit it. Pride has been the downfall of the Highland race.' "`If you please, sir,' I replied, boldly enough now, `the Highlanders are not a downfallen race.' "`I did not mean it in that way,' he said, smiling at my vehemence. `But come with me, boy; I know we will be friendly.' "Where he took me, or what he said to me, I need not tell you. "Suffice it to say that next day we left Scotland and journeyed south by rail, and I wept--yes, I do not now think it shame to say so, though I struggled then to hide my tears--I wept to cross the border. "`It will be such a pleasant change for you, my dear boy,' said good old Major Walton--for that was the gentleman's name, and he had quite taken to me after hearing all my story--`a delightful change indeed after your own bleak, cold, wild hills. We have a very pretty home in Hampshire. You'll soon forget you were ever anywhere else.' "The Major's home was indeed a very nice one; close to the borders of the New Forest it was, and not a great way from the sea. "But ah! Archie, lad, everything was very foreign to me; the very trees looked strange and uncouth, especially the docked pollards, that stood by the banks of the sluggish streams. The style of the houses was strange to me, and the lingo and talk of the people, who, in my opinion, were terribly ignorant.