“‘It’s the pipes that make them so,’ said an officer. ‘The pipes are keeping them a great deal resentful, and still more melancholy.’ ‘The pipes? What have the pipes to do with their feelings?’ “‘Eh, man? Don’t you know that the pipes can talk as good Scots as any man who hears them? Surely ’tis so—and ’tis what the pipes are saying, first in one player’s hands and then in another’s, that keeps the men from forgetting their part in the last battle.’ “Once, as the days passed, when I saw this officer again at leisure, I went to him for an explanation of his surprising disclosure. I had been trying to learn the language of the pipes in the meantime, but I acquired no more understanding than a dog has of English when he distinguishes between a kindly human tone and a cross one. I could tell when a tune was martial and when another was mournful. When a gay one rang out—if any had—I would not have mistaken it for a dirge. To some this may seem a very little learning, but I had begun by thinking all the tunes alike. “‘Yesterday,’ said my friend the officer, ‘we’d a little match between men who had some skill at embroidering the airs of the old ballads with trills of those grace-notes that they call warblers, but this contest was broken up by a rugged son of the hills who, after asking for the pipes, flung from them a few strong, clear notes which gained the attention of all who are born to a knowledge of the music that speaks. I am not one of those, but I called my soldier-servant up and asked him what was being played.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘that’s Mac Callum—a great museecian he is. And hark, sir; he has the right of it and boldly he is telling every one his thoughts. He says that every man kens that the gran’ general who’s dead was as cunning and skilfu’ in war as ony man above him, and ’tis late in the day—now that he’s laid away and dumb—to put blame on him as if he were an ignoramus and a butcher, like some others. And now, oh! brawly ye’re tellin’ it, Mac Callum—he says there may be scheming and plotting in high places but no skullduggery o’ ony sort, however it is gilded, will ever deceive ane single true chiel o’ the Highlands.’”