Chapter III

The piper's anger seemed to be modified on the following morning; but he still growled when his daughter introduced the name MacTavish as he sat before a steaming bowl of porridge and a basin of milk, which he attacked with a large horn spoon and an appetite comparable only to the giant's who fell a victim to the adroitness of Jack the celebrated Giant-killer. Maggie's enthusiastic account of Angus's gift of the boat was received with a critical coldness that made her heart sink within her.

'O ay, Maggie; it iss no doot a peautiful poat—she wass sure to pe that if Angus built her; but it iss fery easy to see what Angus MacTavish iss driving at. Maybe he'll find he has peen counting without his host mirofer, if he thinks he iss going to get you for his wife by gifing you a fishing-poat; what wass a fishing-poat to a lass like you?—as if ye wass a poor lass! Ye're no to pe fashing your head apoot Angus MacTavish, lass—no; he iss no doot a cood lad, but no for the like o' you! There iss Sandy Buchanan noo, the lawyer's clerk mirofer, a far more likely lad to make ye a cood man, and willing?'

'O dad, and how can ye pe saying such things to me on the happiest day o' my life, for Angus asked me yesterday to be his wife; and I—I'——

'Ye what?' said the piper, laying down his spoon and eyeing his daughter sternly.

'Weel, dad, I—I—didna say No.'

'Then I'm thinking ye'll hef to go this fery day whatefer and say "No," my lass, for I'm telling ye I won't hef it!'

Maggie was not generally one of the tearful sort, but the sudden emphasis of her father's words filled her eyes with tears and drove her to silence. She did not trust herself to speak, but lifted her pail hurriedly with a flushed face, and went sorrowfully to milk the 'kye,' whose deep impatient lowing from the byre was urgently demanding attention. When she was half across the court-yard she heard her father calling her back. She turned and went to him.

'Maggie,' he said, drawing her to his knee and holding her brown face between his rough hands tenderly, 'it iss not crying ye are, my bonny lass? No; I wad not hef my lass crying for any MacTavish that efer drank a dram! Not that Angus iss a pad lad—no, I will not say he iss that—he plays the pipes petter than any lad of his years I efer saw—but the MacTavishes—— Ah weel, they're no jist the clan that the Camerons should marry into. Noo, dry your eyes, lass, and pe off to your milking mirofer—Crumple iss moaning as if her udder wass going to crack.'

The maiden said, nothing; she kissed him, but the smile was all vanished from her face as she stooped to relieve Crumple of her milky burden.

The piper went to the stable, and the sound of his whistling rang over the place as he brushed down his horses and gave them their morning feed.

Maggie was in strong hopes, as the morning advanced, that before nightfall, when she expected Angus to come, the tempest would be over, and Angus hailed by her father in his old manner. This hope was dispelled, and poor Maggie made miserable beyond bearing when her father returned to his mid-day meal. The piper had early in the forenoon taken his fishing-rod and gone to a favourite spot of his known as 'the Black Hole,' on the stream, where he had wiled away many an hour and tempted to the bank many a fat spotted trout. When he returned to dinner, his daughter saw with surprise that he brought no fish with him, and that his fishing-rod was broken into half-a-dozen pieces; and moreover, that he was white with anger. Fingal his collie was following with dejected tail and a torn ear, apparently in as bad a temper as his master, judging from the snarling greeting he gave Diana who went to meet them.

'Py the powers, but I'll put the law on him; I'll hef him put in the jail,' cried the piper, as he went into his kitchen and tossed the fragments of his fishing-rod into a corner. 'The plaguard, to preak my fishing-rod and steal my fish mirofer; but I'll hef the law on him! He shall go pefore the shirra as sure as my name iss John Cameron!'

Maggie did not know that Mr MacTavish was at the same moment on his way home with a swollen black eye, carrying with him a goodly fish that ought to have been in the piper's basket, 'Jet' limping behind his master very much bruised indeed.

'And it iss the Teuk that wull pe told all apoot it; the prood teffle, poaching the salmon like a common thief, and knocking a man apoot as if he wass a lower animal,' said the game-keeper, recording his grievance indignantly to his buxom wife, in answer to sympathetic ejaculations as to the state of his eye, when he returned to his dinner.

True to his word, the piper sent the herd-boy to the lawyer's office to tell Sandy Buchanan, with the piper's compliments, &c., that Mr Cameron desired to see him at Glen Heath on important business.

'Well, dad,' Maggie had said impetuously when she heard this message given to 'Geordy,' as they sat at dinner, hardly understanding from what motive her father sought the presence of the detested Sandy Buchanan, 'I can only say that I shall not bide in the hoose if that red-headed, ill-looking man comes to the hoose; I won't inteed!'

'Ye are red-headed yourself!' said the piper abruptly.

'No; I'm not.'

'Yes, ye are. The man canna help himself if the Almichty gef him a red head. The best o' folks iss red-headed. I'm red-headed; and ye are red as a fox or a squirrel yourself, I tell ye'——

'Well, well, dad, we'll no quarrel apoot that; maybe I am; but'——

'I tell ye what it iss, Maggie, ye will bide at home when Mr Buchanan comes, and ye'll pehave yourself civilly, or maybe it may pe worse for ye. Angus MacTavish hass turned your head; but he'll get a bit o' my mind maybe yet, as his father hass pefore him mirofer, and that pefore the set o' sun too!'

'O dad, dad! ye'll break my heart, so ye will, inteed and inteed ye will, dad, if it iss in that way ye speak o' Angus.'

'I'll not hef him come apoot my hoose longer! He iss a wanderin' rake; efery sailor iss that, and no fit to make a cood huspand to the like o' you.'

'He iss not a rake! Ye are no speaking the words of truth, father!' exclaimed the girl passionately.

'Efery sailor iss a rake, Maggie; eferypody knows that; and I daresay he iss none better than his neibors.'

Stung by the cruel words, Maggie ran to the dairy, where she shut herself in and burst into a flood of tears. The Highland maid had few hatreds; she had the impulsive almost passionate temperament of every true Celt, but her impulsiveness ran in loving channels. But if she did hate, she hated warmly—also after the Celtic manner. And the one living object for whom she felt undying scorn was this Sandy Buchanan, who knew more of her father's affairs than any man in Inversnow; and whose studied civility to her on all occasions, and attentions more or less marked, were resented by her as she would have resented another man's insults. Perhaps he was all the more despised because he kept at a respectful distance when Angus was at home; a peculiarity that Maggie attributed to a certain dread of physical consequences, that was not to be wondered at in a weak-legged milksop fellow like him. But whenever the Duke's yacht was away, Mr Sandy danced attendance upon her assiduously, insisting upon seeing her safely home from the kirk on Sunday evenings, and otherwise thrusting his obnoxious presence upon her in ways which she considered offensive.

And sure enough, just as the sun was veering round to the west, the piper was seated at the table of his best parlour with a bottle of whisky and glasses, and a plate of Maggie's crisp oatmeal bannocks between him and the detested Sandy Buchanan, whose breath blew forth gales of peppermint—an odour that Maggie always associated with him, and put the worst construction upon—as he listened patiently to the rather confused statement of the piper's grievance. Sandy tried honestly to look at the case from the piper's stand-point; but put in any form, it appeared that if any legal action was to be taken the decision could hardly take the only form which would satisfy the irate piper—namely the immediate arrest, trial, conviction, and imprisonment of Mr MacTavish for an undefined number of months in the county jail. Sandy gathered that the piper had succeeded in hooking a 'cood seven-pound grilse;' that while he was landing the same, Mr MacTavish appeared on the scene threatening to report him to the Duke for poaching; words passed between them, not of a complimentary nature, ending ultimately in one of two catastrophes—the piper could not clearly remember which—either the game-keeper had seized the piper's rod with result of breaking it to pieces, or the piper had broken his fishing-rod over the game-keeper's back; and then a struggle had ensued, the upshot of which was that the latter walked off with the 'grilse' and a black eye, while the former did the like with his shattered fishing-rod and empty basket, each vowing to lay the matter before 'the shirra.'

The Sheriff, as represented by Sandy Buchanan the fiscal's clerk, thought, much to the delight of the piper, that he had good ground for an action for assault against Mr MacTavish; and presently father and daughter (poor Maggie was compelled to remain in the room to hear the brutal manner in which he, a Cameron, had been treated by a MacTavish) were thrown into a state of mental confusion by the adroit manner in which Sandy now addressing the piper as 'our client,' now as 'the plaintiff;' both of which phrases the piper received and acknowledged in the light of a personal compliment, and also by liberal but not very coherent allusion to Act of Queen Victoria this, and chapter of Act Queen Victoria that; all tending to prove the piper the most abused and injured of men.

In the midst of the conference Angus MacTavish appeared at the door. He indiscreetly opened it and looked in without knocking. The piper, who was feeling at the moment keenly alive to his own importance, with the delightful sense that he had matter to bring before the 'shirra' (as he called the Sheriff), looked up and frowned, fingering his glass of whisky the while.

'What idiot iss it that walks into a shentleman's hoose withoot knocking at the door, and withoot waiting to be asked to come in?'

'Come, piper,' said Angus, walking boldly into the room, somewhat surprised to see Buchanan there, but holding an outstretched hand to the piper; 'it iss not the first, nor the second, nor maybe the twentieth time I hef bed your hospitality, and I am thinking it will not pe the last time—and that without claiming it.'

'My name is Maister Cameron—Maister Cameron of Glen Heath, Maister Angus MacTavish! And apoot its peing the last time or not depends upon more consiterations than one!' The piper spoke with a sternness and pomposity of manner that made his visitor allow his hand to drop quickly to his side, and brought an indignant flush to the young face.

'What does it all mean?' said Angus in a bewildered way, turning to Maggie.

Maggie stood behind her father's chair the personification of misery. The man of law sat looking stolidly before him with the most wooden of expressions on his pale face.

'It means,' said the piper in the same harsh sharp key, 'that that is the door, that yonder is the road, that the quicker ye are there the petter it will pe for you, and the petter pleased too will all in this room pe.'

'Iss that it?' said Angus slowly, looking still at Maggie, and turning again towards the door.

'No, Angus, no! It iss not true that all in this room will pe petter pleased that ye should go. It iss not true!' burst out the girl in the fullness of her heart.

'But it shall pe true!' shouted the piper, bringing his hand firmly down upon the table. Angus did not stay to argue the matter, but sorrowfully went his way.

'Stop that whining, Maggie—stop that foolish whining; I will not hef it!' said the piper, turning upon his daughter fiercely, who tried in vain to repress a sob as Angus disappeared.

'O Sandy Buchanan, it iss muckle that ye'll hef to answer for, if ye'll make me that I'll hate my own father too,' said the poor girl, storming out into open mutiny.

'Leave the room, Maggie!' cried the piper, waving his hand. The maiden gladly availed herself of her dismissal, and fled to the solitude of her own room. 'Cott has not gifen to women the brains to understand pusiness,' he continued, generalising apologetically to his guest.

A week passed, and the piper's wrath against the clan MacTavish endured. The feud was not one-sided. Mr MacTavish replied to a letter full of nothing, expressed in the bitterest legal phraseology, written by Sandy Buchanan on the piper's behalf, by a document of elaborate counter-charges, written by the banker-lawyer of the town, breathing threatenings and lawsuits. And the case promised to be profitable to both of these astute gentlemen, as such cases generally manage to be.