It was no wonder then that she should win the heart of the simple old man speedily and utterly; for what can bard desire beyond a true listener--a mind into which his own may, in verse or tale or rhapsody, in pibroch or coronach, overflow? But when, one evening, in girlish merriment, she took up his pipes, blew the bag full, and began to let a highland air burst fitfully from the chanter, the jubilation of the old man broke all the bounds of reason. He jumped from his seat and capered about the room, calling her all the tenderest and most poetic names his English vocabulary would afford him; then abandoning the speech of the Sassenach, as if in despair of ever uttering himself through its narrow and rugged channels, overwhelmed her with a cataract of soft-flowing Gaelic, returning to English only as his excitement passed over into exhaustion--but in neither case aware of the transition. Her visits were the greater comfort to Duncan, that Malcolm was now absent almost every night, and most days a good many hours asleep; had it been otherwise, Florimel, invisible for very width as was the gulf between them, could hardly have made them so frequent. Before the fishing-season was over, the piper had been twenty times on the verge of disclosing every secret in his life to the high-born maiden. “It’s a pity you haven’t a wife to take care of you, Mr MacPhail,” she said one evening. “You must be so lonely without a woman to look after you!” A dark cloud came over Duncan’s face, out of which his sightless eyes gleamed. “She’ll haf her poy, and she’ll pe wanting no wife,” he said sullenly. “Wifes is paad.” “Ah!” said Florimel, the teasing spirit of her father uppermost for the moment, “that accounts for your swearing so shockingly the other day?” “Swearing was she? Tat will pe wrong. And who was she’ll pe swearing at?” “That’s what I want you to tell me, Mr MacPhail.” “Tid you’ll hear me, my laty?” he asked in a tone of reflection, as if trying to recall the circumstance. “Indeed I did. You frightened me so that I didn’t dare come in.” “Ten she’ll pe punished enough. Put it wass no harm to curse ta wicket Cawmill.” “It was not Glenlyon--it wasn’t a man at all; it was a woman you were in such a rage with.” “Was it ta rascal’s wife, ten, my laty?” he asked, as if he were willing to be guided to the truth that he might satisfy her, but so much in the habit of swearing, that he could not well recollect the particular object at a given time. “Is his wife as bad as himself then?” “Wifes is aalways worser.” “But what is it makes you hate him so dreadfully? Is he a bad man?” “A fery pad man, my tear laty! He is tead more than a hundert years.” “Then why do you hate him so?” “Och hone! Ton’t you’ll nefer hear why?” “He can’t have done _you_ any harm.”