“Ton’t you’ll pe preaking her heart with ta one hand while you’ll pe clapping her head with ta other,” said the piper. “Ton’t be taking her into your house to pe telling her she can’t see. Is it that old Tuncan is not a man as much as any woman in ta world, tat you’ll pe telling her she can’t see? I tell you she _can_ see, and more tan you’ll pe think. And I will tell it to you, tere iss a pape in this house, and tere was pe none when Tuncan she’ll co away.” “We a’ ken ye ha’e the _second_ sicht,” said Mrs Findlay, who had not expected such a reply; “an’ it was only o’ the first I spak. Haith! it wad be ill set o’ me to anger ye the moment ye come back to yer ain. Sit ye doon there by the chimla-neuk, till I mak ye a dish o’ tay. Or maybe ye wad prefar a drap o’ parritch an’ milk? It’s no muckle I ha’e to offer ye, but ye cudna be mair walcome.” As easily appeased as irritated, the old man sat down with a grateful, placid look, and while the tea was _drawing_, Mrs Findlay, by judicious questions, gathered from him the history of his adventures. Unable to rise above the disappointment and chagrin of finding that the boy he loved as his own soul, and had brought up as his own son was actually the child of a Campbell woman, one of the race to which belonged the murderer of his people in Glencoe, and which therefore he hated with an absolute passion of hatred; unable also to endure the terrible schism in his being occasioned by the conflict between horror at the Campbell blood, and ineffaceable affection for the youth in whose veins it ran, and who so fully deserved all the love he had lavished upon him, he had concluded to rid himself of all the associations of place and people and event now grown so painful, to make his way back to his native Glencoe, and there endure his humiliation as best he might, beheld of the mountains which had beheld the ruin of his race. He would end the few and miserable days of his pilgrimage amid the rushing of the old torrents, and the calling of the old winds about the crags and precipices that had hung over his darksome yet blessed childhood. These were still his friends. But he had not gone many days’ journey before a farmer found him on the road insensible, and took him home. As he recovered, his longing after his boy Malcolm grew, until it rose to agony, but he fought with his heart, and believed he had overcome it. The boy was a good boy, he said to himself; the boy had been to him as the son of his own heart; there was no fault to find with him or in him; he was as brave as he was kind, as sincere as he was clever, as strong as he was gentle; he could play on the bagpipes, and very nearly talk Gaelic, but his mother was a Campbell, and for that there was no help. To be on loving terms with one in whose veins ran a single drop of the black pollution was a thing no MacDhonuill must dream of. He had lived a man of honour, and he would die a man of honour, hating the Campbells to their last generation.