"Yes," I nodded, "but that need not interfere with you—two can live here as easily as one, and, now that I have had a good look at you, I think we might get along very well together." "Sir," said he solemnly, "my race is royal—I am a Stuart—here's a Stuart's hand," and he reached out his hand to me across the hearth with a gesture that was full of a reposeful dignity. Indeed, I never remember to have seen Donald anything but dignified. "How do you find life in these parts?" I inquired. "Indeefferent, sir—vera indeefferent! Tae be sure, at fairs an' sic-like I've often had as much as ten shillin' in 'ma bonnet at a time; but it's juist the kilties that draw em; they hae no real love for the pipes, whateffer! A rantin' reel pleases 'em well eneugh, but eh! they hae no hankerin' for the gude music." "That is a question open to argument, Donald," said I; "can any one play real music on a bagpipe, think you?" "Sir," returned the Scot, setting down the empty flask and frowning darkly at the fire, "the pipes is the king of a' instruments, 'tis the sweetest, the truest, the oldest, whateffer!" "True, it is very old," said I thoughtfully; "it was known, I believe, to the Greeks, and we find mention of it in the Latin as 'tibia utricularia;' Suetonius tells us that Nero promised to appear publicly as a bagpiper. Then, too, Chaucer's Miller played a bagpipe, and Shakespeare frequently mentions the 'drone of a Lincolnshire Bagpipe.' Yes, it is certainly a very old, and, I think, a very barbarous instrument." "Hoot toot! the man talks like a muckle fule," said Donald, nodding to the fire. "For instance," I continued, "there can be no comparison between a bagpipe and a—fiddle, say." "A fiddle!" exclaimed Donald in accents of withering scorn, and still addressing the fire. "Ye can juist tell him tae gang tae the de'il wi' his fiddle." "Music is, I take it, the expression of one's mood or thought, a dream translated into sound," said I thoughtfully, "therefore—" "Hae ye ever heard the pipes?" "Why, yes, but long ago." "Then," said Donald, "ye shall juist hear 'em again." So saying, he wiped his mouth, took up his instrument, and began slowly inflating it. Then, all at once, from drones and chanter there rushed forth such a flood of melody as seemed to sweep me away upon its tide.