He jumped to his feet and took the pipes from the old man's hands, and over his shoulder with the drones.
“Stand back, lad!” he cried to Gilian, and Gilian went nearer the door.
The march came fast to the chanter—the old tune, the fine tune that Kintail has heard before, when the wild men in their red tartan came over hill and moor; the tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it. The tune of the heroes, the tune of the pinelands and the broad straths, the tune that the eagles of Loch Duich crack their beaks together when they hear, and the crows of that country-side would as soon listen to as the squeal of their babies.
“Well! mighty well!” said Paruig Dali. “You have the tartan of the clan in it.”
“Not bad, I'll allow,” said Gilian. “Let me try.”
He put his fingers on the holes, and his heart took a leap back over two generations, and yonder was Glencoe! The grey day crawled on the white hills and the Mack roofs smoked below. Snow choked the pass, eas and corn filled with drift and flatted to the brae-face; the wind tossed quirky and and in the little bashes and among the smooring lintels and joists; the Mood of old and young lappered on the hearthstone, and the bairn, with a knifed throat, had an icy lip on a frozen teat. Out of the place went the tramped path of the Campbell butchers—far on their way to Glenlyon and the towns of paper and ink and liars—“Muinntir a' ghlinne so, muinntir a' ghlinne so!—People, people, people of this glen, this glen, this glen!”
“Dogs! dogs! O God of grace—dogs and cowards!” cried Rory. “I could be dirking a Diarmaid or two if by luck they were near me.”
“It is piping that is to be here,” said Paruig, “and it is not piping for an hour nor piping for an evening, but the piping of Dunvegan that stops for sleep nor supper.”
So the three stayed in the bothy and played tune about while time went by the door. The birds flew home to the branches, the longnecked beasts flapped off to the shore to spear their flat fish; the rutting deers bellowed with loud throats in the deeps of the wood that stands round Half Town, and the scents of the moist night came gusty round the door. Over the back of Auchnabreac the sun trailed his plaid of red and yellow, and the loch stretched salt and dark from Cairn Dubh to Creaggans.
In from the hill the men and the women came, weary-legged, and the bairns nodded at their heels. Sleepiness was on the land, but the pipers, piping in the bothy, kept the world awake.